My Ideal City.

Scenarios for the European City of the 3rd Millennium

Edited by Sara Marini

My Ideal City.
Scenarios for the European City of the 3rd Millennium
Edited by Sara Marini

Universit Iuav di Venezia

Venezia 2011
ISBN 978-88-87697-57-5

Index

Introduction My Ideal City

1. The Ideal City and the participatory process

Sara Marini _ Diagnosis of a former concept: from the real city towards the ideal city
Visualizing Crowdsourced Urban Landscapes.
The impact of social networking in participatory practices
Daniele Villa
Constants in Future Cities and Regions
Liliana Bazzanella, Luca Caneparo, Giuseppe Roccasalva, Franco Corsico

11

17

23

Ideal cities - ideal citizens?

Participatory urbanism and activity patterns in a post-utopian European context
Kathrin Golda-Pongratz

28

New Delhi 2011.

Creative and vibrant synergies as possible solutions for urban planning
Claudia Roselli

37

Cities Personal Foresights: A case study in Turin metropolitan area

Luca Caneparo

46

Graffiti as a critical encounter of the notions purity and order: Towards a contingent city
Konstantinos Avramidis, Konstantina Drakopoulou

64

Ave Maria. Ideal as Devotion, Participation as Exclusion

Alberto Bertagna

71

WEAK CITY . Ecotonal strategies for urban landscape

Giovanna Bua, Elisa Cristina Cattaneo, Chiara Locardi, Maria Chiara Trabacchi

76

Soundwalking. A new tool for urban regeneration

Laura Basco

86

Where we discuss?
Mario Andrea Valori, Virginia Dara, Alessandra Sighinolfi

92

Informal inside the contemporary new urban question

Anna Agostini, Michele Sbrissa

96

Walking as a creation of narratives and the formation of place

Claudia Patrizia Ferrai
"DEGREES OF FREEDOM".
The natural and rural areas as contemporary generators of social affective synergies
Angel L. Gonzalez Morales
Informational cities as urban centers of the knowledge era
Sviatlana Khveshchanka, Agnes Mainka

102

112

117

Organized Networks and the image of the European archipelago.

Towards a new geopolitical scenario and its relevance in the perception of the built environment
Raffaele P

123

Transcription of Human Dimension from Lynch to our days.

Meaning, history and theories, models, tools, representations and perspectives
Salvino Arturo Pozzi

131

The Interpretation of the Informal City

Fabio Quici

138

2. The construction of a new urban imagery: models, techniques, stereotypes

Malvina Borgherini, Emanuele Garbin _ My Ideal City (MIC): Virtual Environments to Design the Future Town

151

Cartographic models for a diachronic analysis of the urban image of Rome

Piero Albisinni, Laura Carlevaris, Antonio Catizzone,
Laura De Carlo, Vittorio Di Stefano, Alessandro Micucci

163

The overall urban image: a tool for the management of landscape and urban planning
Santiago Manuel Pardo Garca, Jess Rodrguez Rodrguez, Florencio Zoido Naranjo

172

The re-definition of collective image.

Between representation and politics in a northern Italian middle size city
Paola Pellegrini

183

The City and its Vision. The Collapse of Urban Representation: Migrants Mapping Milan
Nausica Pezzoni

190

Expansion and future of the European city

Livio Sacchi

201

Blots and Patchworks: Images of a Spread City

Rossella Salerno

210

From Theatrical Action to the Town as a Stage Set: Urban Images from the End of the 1960s to Today
Ilaria Bignotti, Elisabetta Modena, Marco Scotti, Francesca Zanella

215

3D web-sharing for a new vision of the cities

Alessio Cardaci, Antonella Versaci

226

Stratified landscapes: the image of conscious memory

Juan Carlos DallAsta Gutirrez

234

Utopy and comics imaginary cities

Michela De Domenico

238

Looking for modernity / looking for heritage.

Overlapping European imageries on Sub-Saharan urban environment
Filippo De Dominicis, Ilaria Giannetti

247

Waterfront landscapes of the 21st century.

Architectures for travellers along the Water-City threshold
Olivia Longo

255

Bari Urban Visions

Anna Christiana Maiorano, Cesare Verdoscia

261

Green neighborhoods. Cities' breath

Claudio Novembre

271

From Utopia to Non-Place. Identity and Society in the Citys Space

Simona Pecoraio

275

Theories and architectures towards new city soundscapes

Ida Recchia

280

Envisioning Cities
Giovanna Sonda

285

3. Toward an energy efficient city

Dario Trabucco _Toward an energy efficient city

293

Fostering resilient cities: from centralized to distributed networks hydropower systems

Guido Minucci, Lorenzo Chelleri

298

Energy Design
Luca Mazzari, Emanuele Sommariva

307

An identity for the sustainable city

Elisabetta Pero

314

Evaluation of the effectiveness of innovative and unconventional systems in urban areas

Elisa Fornasiero

320

Reshaping the city ground-scape with vegetation

Maria Livia Olivetti

330

Eco-Urban Retrofitting
Luca Donner

336

1. The Ideal City and the participatory process

MIC _ My Ideal City

Diagnosis of a former concept: from the real city towards the ideal city
Sara Marini, Iuav University of Venice

Breakdowns
The My Ideal City research project aims to construct ideal city scenarios for four real cities that meet the needs of their
citizens. As the definition of its title suggests, it is based on the short circuit between terms and questions investigating
the implementation of instruments used to observe and therefore plan a city. The acronym MIC My Ideal City could
be seen as a spur to breaking down, and therefore diagnosing a former concept, that of the ideal city. The 21st century
has experienced a series of important changes in this regard, also seen as the legacy and new projections of what was
termed the Short Twentieth Century.
The first change in direction concerns the nature of the visions, which is invalidated by the support used to design or
write the ideal city, once fixed on paper, and now a virtual reality. The immaterial means of construction of the city
demands a kind of concealed author acting as a translator, as an intermediary between citizens, their prefiguration, the
real city and the design. The second aspect that distinguishes the Renaissance perspectives and 19th-century sections
laying bare the infrastructures under construction in towns and cities from modern representations of the city-machine,
an aspect that might give us food for thought, is the decline in the relationship between vision/construction, the extreme
synthesis of real/unreal. Though the first term of this apparent dichotomy fades into the concept of utopia, the second
asserts its pivotal role by demanding a review of the instruments involved in its planning. Ideal and real seem to be
profoundly distant in a society and a time that many have deemed incapable of planning (or projecting into the future) as
in the 2009 Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, whose homage to reality and its scenes veered between a documentary
and voyeuristic approach. At the same time, on the international scene, we are witnessing a multitude of consultations,
conventions and seminars aiming to pre-define the time and geography of the future: Le Grans Pari(s) (2008), Audi
Urban Future Award. Building a Vision for 2030 (2010), London 2050, Barcelona 2050.
This also leads to the third factor characterising the recent rediscovery of the ideal city, implicit in the my in the title of
the European project. The experiences leading to reflections on the future of territories multiply the directions of
response, often using the instrument of participation in different forms. Thomas Mores Utopia led to vaguer designs
where the author either remains unknown in favour of diffused authorship or represents a collective vision. The
concept of the ideal city appears to evolve towards a collective city imposed on real data and on the micropolitics of
possible desire. From ideal islands in imaginary territories to visions close to reality, cities promising to be alternatives to
ordinary scenarios, to the frequently tin-pot dreams of newly founded cities denying the restlessness emerging from
reality, to the recent consultations constructing visions to forestall change in order to save the real city: today they all
11

MIC _ My Ideal City

seem to have meet the response or correspondence of a request that is diffuse yet weak in terms of its implementation
tools, for a city to be constructed beginning with a single anonymous microcosm.

MY
The individual, freed from the standardization of the modern movement, draws daily new realities, asserting his/her own
micropolitics of desire. The self-affirmation of the individual on the ground takes place on one side on the basis of a daily
transformation denouncing a lack of long-distance gaze on things, with the crushing of the collective that seems to have
erased the projective capacity of the desired; on the other side, the ecological, territorial, economic, and symbolic crisis
of the city as a system calls for a new awareness and a shared planning that goes beyond simply individualism.
Therefore, My represents the tension between the individual actions and practices, and the possibility to work out new
possibilities for collective actions and practices.
From the "liquefaction of society" often examined by Zygmunt Bauman in his studies to the information bomb", we have
witnessed the multiplication of metaphors and reflections aiming to represent a society that has shattered into multiple
microcosms. This multiplication no longer corresponds to a single image imposed by an author but to a myriad of
perspectives bearing symbols of a post-industrial society documented in Andy Warhol's work.
Vito Acconcis work, for example, encapsulates the friction that has developed between the public and private spheres.
In Personal Island (1992), an installation constructed at Zwolle (Netherlands) and Park up a Building and House up a
Building (1997), works attached to the outside walls of the Centro Galego de Arte Contempornea in Santiago de
Compostela by lvaro Siza, this American architect expresses the desire of the individual for space in the form of an
island that replaces the political and social connotations of Mores island with playful environmentalist notes, and mocks
the over-exposure of the private realm that simultaneously superimposes itself on the public space in his Spanish
installations.
Contemporary architectural research and theories have brought forth a translation for My in the rise of a renewed
smallness interpreted according to different geographical contexts and assumptions (Atelier Bow-Wow, Rien Korteknie e
Mechthild Stuhlmacher). Although it clearly contradicts the bigness promoted by Rem Koolhaas, it too has re-emerged
from a complex past. Unlike existenzminimum it is propelled by an extreme search for solutions with minute dimensions
that are designed to be purpose-built, site-specific and to stand apart in order to connect with their contexts, also in a
critical sense, and with their clients or even better with their users. In these experiences small becomes a synonym for
the promotion of the space of the individual as a unit participating in a complex design that does not seek deliberate
isolation or reiteration but resembles the description in Archizooms No-Stop City project: a discrete yet not autonomous
atom. Smallness also requires greater attention to be paid to construction, a direct relationship between technology and
form, drawing attention to details both in architectural and social terms and highlighting the citys neglected possibilities
and places.
But in terms of planning instruments, My implies sensitivity to so-called microstories and the rethinking of the
participatory approach to constructing cities. Basically, we are witnessing the re-emergence of the conflict between
generalisation and specificity in form, or rather, the translation of the crisis of mass production and its evolution into weak
diffused yet multi-sided forms, into urban layouts or into architectural projects has yet to leave a clear track.
12

MIC _ My Ideal City

Forty years after De Carlos request for a more participatory vision for future architecture, his words still hinge upon
unsolved issues such as the equation of form and function, the reasoning of conventions, the failure to respond to
behaviour and conflicts. And his text still bears the traces of the persistent ambiguity implied by the term Ideal, often
associated with Utopia, and of its role when speaking of a project whose etymology originates in the Latin projectum,
meaning throw forth.
"Participation exists when everyone intervenes to the same extent in managing power, or - even better - when power no
longer exists because everyone is directly and equally involved in the decision-making process.
You will probably object that Im describing a utopia. A fair objection because participatory architecture is utopian;
however, it is a realistic utopia and that makes a huge difference." (De Carlo 1973)

IDEAL
Ideal and real can be conceived as split, dichotomous terms that act on different levels: the first seems to assume a
negative meaning, based on its proximity to the concept of utopia, while the second holds a position so strong to become
objective and preventing a critical look, design, and practices. Nevertheless, it is exactly the presence of an ideal
understanding of contemporary cities, their representation through a discursive regime done of possibilities and
opportunities, that makes possible to act on, change, and reassemble, the perspectives of urban development.
The "urban" reasoning of the ideal city springs from two key images: the Ideal City (1479) panel attributed to Luciano
Laurana and Thomas Mores Utopia. By referring to these two constructs we cause various facets of this term to emerge
along with derived meanings: while Laurana's painting contains the representation of a concept which served as a
reference for the construction of real cities like, for example, the main square of San Giovanni Valdarno, the book by the
English Humanist projects the construction of an ideal world into the sphere of the imagination.
in Utopia (1516), a dialogue with the explorer Raphael Hythloday, Thomas More invents an ideal counter-society, in
opposition to contemporary society, in the closed world of an island. While Laurana's painting contains a partial
perspective of the city whose limits and boundaries remain unknown, More constructs his new world in the microcosm of
an island, playing with the possible paradoxes suggested by the expression used as the title of the work. The word
"utopia" comes from the Greek "ou-topos" meaning "in no place" or rather, in the world of ideas, "everywhere" (from the
Greek "eu-topos", "in every place" - Violeau 2009). This brief appraisal of the two works allows us to recognise the
planning tools capacity to accept the positive impulses generated by major change as well as the possibility of being
bound by existing conditions. By recreating the planning tools used to construct the ideal city as well as the process
involved in adapting them for the purpose of orienting change we can understand how Renaissance perspectives, 19thcentury cutaway views revealing the infrastructures under construction in various cities, and representations of the
modern city-machine all lead to a current kind of reconciliation between literary and drawn constructions.
Grattacieli farebbero paesaggio se fossero cos (Skyscrapers would make a landscape if they were like this) is the
text that Carlo Scarpa used for the title of one of his pencil drawings on paper dated 1972. The scene depicted shows a
sequence of tall buildings, repeating the same type of skyscraper. Architectural structures shown in different sizes or
probably with differences determined by perspective, rotated and surrounded by dense vegetation. The volume has a
13

MIC _ My Ideal City

sloping side produced by the articulation of the floors, while the remaining sides, which are orthogonal to the ground, are
mainly windowless. A considerable way up the opposite side to the sloping side - it is impossible to figure out at exactly
what floor from the drawing - is a deviation that seems to wish to turn into a raised plaza. The presence of this open
space is reflected in the design of the two adjoining sides: removal of materials, openings, use of different materials all
alter the uniformity of the two surfaces. The landscape brings to the forefront one of the skyscrapers and, just behind it,
between the other architectural presences, the intense insistent pencil line presumably traces dense vegetation. Several
lines in the sky allude to the existence of a surrounding environment and lightly sketched insubstantial figures are
revealed. In the distance, a flock of birds in flight recall another vision, another idea of city. In his Ville contemporaine
(1922) Le Corbusier melded the outline of the buildings with that of an airplane.
In both visions, large-scale architecture is repeated, serial; in Scarpa's drawing the differing faades and rotation of the
objects creates a scenario based on variation. The city imagined by the Swiss architect is a succession of repeated
skyscrapers, all with the same faade, laid out on a regular orthogonal grid.
In Scarpa's drawing, the skyscrapers with their different faades participate in the definition of the landscape while the
only common aspect of the buildings in Le Corbusiers vision is their huge scale, a giant presence that frees up the
ground. Scarpas drawing affirms that skyscrapers may create a landscape provided that certain conditions are met.
The oblique wall of the tower provides an occasion for the space of the volume to encounter the empty space of the sky
above and the vegetation below while containing the specification of the living spaces, the measure of its internal
articulation. In the sloping plane, Scarpa brings together two extreme approaches to creating a city. Only the anomalous
condition of the surfaces not orthogonal to the ground can reveal the succession of floors that transform the gigantism of
the building. This work affirms the possibility of making landscapes by constructing worlds suspended between the ideal
and the real where large and small have a specific raison dtre and position.
Seen in the context of architectural history, Scarpas spatial interpolation provides a rare occasion for bonding. Usually
imaginary landscapes take shape thanks to the intensification of the microscopic and the exasperation of the
macroscopic as described in Le Corbusiers work and as is often the case in the fables and experiments of visual arts.
The two scales are sometimes rather simplistically associated with the desire to construct an object, on the one hand,
and the desire to give rise to a monument on the other. But extremes, even of scale, are tangent to each other and can
easily exist within each other as shown by the short film made in 1977 by Charles and Ray Eames architects,
designers and directors. Power of Ten is a documentary that takes the viewer from the infinitesimal to infinity in the
space of ten minutes. Using a succession of time and spatial scales to the power of 10, the camera zooms out from a
picnic in a Chicago park to the edges of the universe then back in towards planet earth to explore the subatomic
particles of the human body. The journey reveals the similarity between the microworld in space and in anatomical
tissues. This work by Charles and Ray Eames unites two dimensional extremes usually used in architecture and
planning as symbols of antithetical imaginary worlds thanks to a moving view giving rise to overlaps and reverse shots.
While Scarpa rotates the skyscraper, creating a hypothetical rotation of the object, to express its housing nature, the two
American authors take us on a journey of discovery into the relations between infinite spaces and infinitesimal visions.
The need to anticipate events announced as epoch-making climatic upheavals is a sign, on the one hand, of the
absolute centrality of the real city as a minimum condition of survival, and, on the other, the influence of CAD tools has
led to the rediscovery of long-term projections with a wide spatial range. It seems that the origins of the rediscovery of
14

MIC _ My Ideal City

imagined paper cities and the pivotal work "Utopia" lie in scenarios intended to safeguard the real city. The static
drawing is no longer equal to the task of describing change also because change is open, dictated not so much by ideal
constructions as by natural concomitant causes. An exhaustive description demands a text that runs parallel to
scenarios communicating different visions and supporting the narration of temporal and spatial leaps.

CITY
The city as a place of living and sharing, back to the centre of attention, calls for a review of methods and tools that
manage its transformation. Decision makers, political movements, and common citizens, newly talk about participation to
reduce the distance between the individual and the collective and between the ideal and the real, criticizing and
dismissing forms of design aimed at accommodating superimposed, hetero-normative, meanings of living together in a
contemporary city.
The form and construction of the city as space of the ideal developed over time, beginning with single microcosms and in
non-existent worlds built in the imagination, and ending today with a drawing of a kind of archipelago in movement in the
sea or land hosting it. Basically, the ideal now seems to be safeguarded by each single reality capable of proclaiming
itself such and of requesting its own logical evolution.
After islands the next step involved defining alternative cities to ordinary scenarios: from the garden city, the city
imagined by the modern movement, Taliesin, Broadacre City right up to Arcosanti, these are just some of the
possibilities planned in response to real input. Some of these experiences came into being not as new worlds but as
appendages to the urban system, suburbs with a different DNA dependent on the existing centre, while others took
shape on the side, creating anomalous bubbles, refuges from givenness that do not even in this case produce changes
and transformations because they are basically oriented towards reality.
The end of the last century saw the reproposal of new dreams or new occupations in altered forms of urban
arrangements as in Dubai or the Venices constructed in different locations world-wide and narrated in Diller and
Scofidio's Chain City, where the role of virtual communication instruments has become absolutely central. Echoing
primitive constructions, like Neolithic circles, newly founded cities may be based on simplified designs that are only
legible by satellite, or, reproducing scenarios that can only be experienced after a long journey, they are structured using
possible film shots and views expected by tourists/citizens. These realities of alteration and dislocation narrate the
fracture characterising representation in the contemporary world: on the one hand, the real city requiring more flexible
designs, shunning the imposition of static lines and demanding tensors, guidelines for development or attention, on the
other, the ideal or virtual world flows beyond its limits and imposes its own low definition rules of perception on real
models like a videogame construction tool.
The project for a city in the new century responds to the need for forms of ideality, substantially re-inventing its nature of
projection by means of orchestrations, consultations and debates transporting real data into the near future. No longer a
single author striving to describe the changes necessary nor a single planner intent upon the definition of new models of
city, the implementation of the real city project demands a plurality of visions, comparing them and requesting
multidisciplinary teams to read reality, decodify and guide it, finding answers in it and imposing new points of view.
These visions must refer to a precise time-point in the future; they must not merely respond to a current datum but
15

MIC _ My Ideal City

succeed in predicting its evolution while supporting the complexity of the system rather than reducing it to a simplified
explanatory design. In this case too, representation data, in particular the breakdown of maps into layers, regulates the
operative procedures and the restitution of possible approaches. One of the greatest incentives for the acceptance of
complexity is the ecological crisis and the resulting climatic and environmental upheavals. The economic crisis
demanding concerted powers and appeals to a sense of community seems to outline a similar scenario to the one
experienced in the 1970s, bringing to the fore approaches to the real merely touched upon at the time. The city project
once more focuses on issues such as "project process", "order and disorder", "open systems", concepts mainly applying
to landscape design and extending from it to plans covering the entire city.
In this situation the landscape of architecture seeks other paths made of primitive, hybrid, green worlds that are
sometimes nave or incomplete. Fleeing the mere metric dimension in order to privilege the glorification of time and the
removal of its barriers and ethos, it produces temporal deformations and constructs scenes where ideal and real
strategically exist side by side in a continuously changing flux.

References
BENJAMIN W., Immagini di citt, Einaudi, Torino 1971.
BETTETINI M., La citt dell'utopia: dalla citt ideale alla citt del terzo millennio, Garzanti Scheiwiller, 2002.
BOUVIER N., Lvy B., Raffestin C., Ma ville idale, Mtropolis 1999.
BURDETT R., Citt: Architettura e Societ, X Mostra Internazionale di Architettura di Venezia, La Biennale di VeneziaMarsilio, Venezia 2006.
CASTELLS M., The rise of the network society, Blackwell, Oxford 1996.
CHOAY F., Lurbanisme. Utopie set ralits, Seuil Paris 1965.
DE CARLO G., L'architettura della partecipazione, in RICHARDS J:M:, BLAKE P., DE CARLO G., L'architettura degli
anni settanta, Il Saggiatore, Milano 1973.
DE SETA C., Ferretti M., Teneti A., Chastel A., Imago urbis: dalla citt relae alla citt ideale, F. M. Ricci, 1986.
EATON R., Ideal cities: utopianism and the (un)built environment, Thames & Hudson, London 2002.
GODELIER M., L'ideale e il materiale. Pensiero, economie, societ, Editori Riuniti, Roma 1985.
GUIDICINI P., Sviluppo urbano e immagine della citt, Franco Angeli, Milano 1971.
IRELAND R., Le paysage envisag, Zufferey M-P, Art et cartes postales, Infolio, Paris 2009.
KRUFT H.-W., Le citt utopiche: la citt ideale dal XV al XVIII secolo fra utopia e realt, Laterza, 1990.
LEFEBVRE H., Le droit la ville, ditions du Seuil, 1974.
LISCOMBE R. W., World Urban Forum, Vancouver Working Group, The ideal city, University of British Columbia, 2005.
LYNCH K., The image of the city, MIT, Cambridge 1968.
MELLER H. E. (edited by), The ideal city, University Press, Leicester, 1979.
NOTO C., The ideal city, Arno Press, 1903.
PETERSON E., An ideal city for an ideal people, Peterson E., 1905
PHILIPS D., Study for the ideal city, Seeing Eye Books, 1999.
RICCIONI M., Balletti A., Citt ideale-citt irreale, La Compagnia della Stampa, 2005.
RICHTER M., Van der Ley S., Ideal city, invisible cities, Revolver, 2006.
ROMANO M., La citt come opera d'arte, Einaudi, Torino 2008.
ROSENAU H., The ideal city. Its architectural evolution in Europe, Methuen & Co., London-New York 1983.
SECCHI B., La citt del XX secolo, Laterza, Bari-Roma 2005.
SEVERINO R., Meta-realism in architecture: in quest of the ideal city, Idea Books, 1995.
SICA P., L'immagine della citt da Bari a Las Vegas, Laterza, Bari 1970.
SORICE M., La citt ideale: Italo Calvino dal "pessimismo dell'intelligenza" all'intelligenza dell'utopia, Merlo, 1990.
VENTURA F. (edited by), Alle radici della citt contemporanea: il pensiero di Lewis Mumford, Citt Studi, Milano 1997.
VERCELLONI V., Atlante storico dell'idea europea della citt ideale, Jaca Book, 1994.
VIOLEAU J-L., Les 101 mots de l'utopie, Archibooks, Paris 2009.
16

Introduction
My Ideal City

The European project My Ideal City, funded by the Eu under the 7th Framework Programme, involved four science
museums (Museo Tridentino di Scienze Naturali di Trento, Pavilho do Conhecimento - Cincia Viva Lisbon,
Experimentarium Copenhagen, Bloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem) and the University Iuav of Venice.
The MIC project has experienced the application of virtual worlds technologies to visually represent the projections into
the future of images that were evoked by groups of citizens in a participatory process that took place in four cities
hosting the mentioned science museums. The experiment addressed issues of social research, architecture and urban
planning, art and media technology, museology.
The book traces the themes of the ideal city in the future, in the aspects of participation, multimedia presentation and
energy sustainability, by convening the best results obtained through an international call for papers launched in January
2011.
The text is structured in three sections: 1. The Ideal City and the participatory process, 2. The construction of a new
urban imagery: models, techniques, stereotypes, 3. Toward an energy efficient city. The texts - Diagnosis of a former
concept; from the real city towards the ideal city, My Ideal City (MIC): Virtual Environments to Design the Future Town,
Toward an energy efficient city - that open the three sections are introductory to the issues identified.

MIC _ My Ideal City

Visualizing Crowdsourced Urban Landscapes.

The impact of social networking in participatory practices
Daniele Villa, Politecnico di Milano

The city is not merely a physical mechanism and an artificial construction.

The city is, rather, a state of mind.
R.E. Park, E.W. Burgess, R.D. McKenzie, The City, 1967

This work will deepen the concept of visualization of urban landscape as related to use of collective forms of social
media: urban space is not intended as a simple summation of objects, but as a complex interaction between places,
people and images / representations of these spaces that citizens create, transform and share.
Visible changes by no means tell the whole story of the underlying development tendencies. Beneath the surface of
expansion of the built environment exist an intensive network of virtual exchange of knowledge, data and information.
Gabi (2007). In this way the visualization process is not only a way to define consolidated imaginary but also a social
practice of the creation of urban space, addressing questions related to visualization means also discuss the relationship
between space and perception: mental models are possible illustration for the process of spatial perception, they are
extremely useful for understanding similarities and differences between real places and the social perceptions.
The importance of mental images is due to their function as a filter in the process of perception they proceed and result
from the processing of sensations. They give orientation, steer attention and help to interpret environment (Healey
2007) . Many examples of direct participation of populations in urban policies show that great attention should be paid to:
- use powerful and shared images to represent the transformation of an urban environment;
- not underestimate the quantity and quality of social interactions that influence the perception of space;
- take into account a broader social need of new representations of the urban landscape;
- use constructively the tendency of citizens to share knowledge, information and opinions about their urban landscapes
through multiple channels, direct and indirect.
A major challenge to study issues related to the stratification of local knowledge is certainly on the role to be attributed to
scientific knowledge in relation to diffuse, not systematized social form of place-based knowledge.
Just as the residents of a particular place develop an experientially acquired local knowledge of specific conditions, so
expert groups have their own local knowledge. The knowledge production becomes a social process of making
meanings, shaping by the situation, trajectories, activities and values of particular social groupings. (Healey 2007)
The amount of tools and opportunities through which people produce flexible forms of local knowledge has grown
dramatically in recent years: informal groups of citizens are increasingly present in the processes of city planning
(including in relation to laws that expressly require the 'direct engagement of inhabitants) but at the same time, it is
17

MIC _ My Ideal City

possible to detect a greater number of individual people, not organized, who use very often indirect tool of place-based
participation. Through the channels carried by the new ICT and the web 2.0 social networking (blogs, micro blogs,
Twitter, Facebook, mobile geo referenced application, etc..) are shared every day hundreds of thousands of local
information of different nature: it is a mass of raw data which should be observed and analyzed carefully. If, on the one
hand, it is not always easy to involve citizens in the processes of active and direct participation, on the other is no longer
possible to ignore the various forms of interaction that can generate shared representations of an urban landscape.
Using the most common forms of microblogging citizens tend to collect local information that can not generate a broad
and analytical vision: through Twitter, Facebook, or one of many tools for mapping the territory is much easier to
exchange opinions or judgments about a single place that a series of useful overview. Despite or perhaps, because of
this fragmented proliferation of information generated by the local inhabitants we must take note of the proliferation and
the growing social demand for images, visualizations, representations able to:
- facilitate coagulation of single action in organized forms of shared development of the urban landscape;
- reduce the levels of abstraction of description of the changes and what-if scenarios;
- allow the generation and exchange of vivid images promoting the possibility of emphasizing the positives and negatives
of a places.
Translating the exchange of information and ideas that people generated through the Web 2.0 also means dealing with
new and unexpected aspects of shared local-based and relational knowledge. It is therefore appropriate to ask what is
the proper way to find and organize raw information and, most importantly, how to manage the relationship between
visual-translation, made by the experts, and restitution and re-elaboration of the citizens. The drawing is, in these terms,
a very powerful tool for condensing forms of collective knowledge through the direct intervention of 'expert knowledge'.
The use of drawing and mapping practices of direct participation is not new: more experimental when it comes to giving
visual form to the chaotic and unorganized information.
Drawing, in such experiential knowledge not only helps to improve the understanding that inform policy. It may also help
to make the arguments of strategy-makers more robust, through resonances between what the expert says and the
experiential knowledge of those with a stake in an urban area. (Healey 2007)
In this context, the role of expert knowledge in the analysis and definition of the social perception of the urban landscape
is changing rapidly and radically. These recent developments of the Web force the technicians to rely on new skills: from
the cultural mediation of landscape values to the ad hoc interpretation of the new geographical information. Furthermore,
local and non-technical knowledge starts to play an increasingly important role in expanding the scope of the definitions
of the urban landscapes.
In the dense urban area of Milan metropolitan region (an urban archipelago that has been effectively called 'City of
Cities') there are various cases of use of Web 2.0 tools (Figure 1) for organized participation of citizens in the dynamic
transformation of urban space. Mostly it is a response to requests from the recent regional planning law (L.R. 12/2005)
on the issues of participation: planners are beginning to use blogs, geoblog and microblogging platforms (particularly
Facebook) to stimulate the public on specific evaluation of the territory. The public meetings for evaluation of the impacts
generated by planning alternate indirect interaction via web: the inhabitants can thus choose how a trace of their views
on critical issues and positivity of an urban landscape (Figure 2). In other cases (as in the first urban eco-museum in
Lombardia: the Ecomuseo Urbano Metropolitano Milano Nord-EUMM) participatory mapping techniques allow a
18

MIC _ My Ideal City

neighborhood of the metropolis to collect local memories and preserve their cultural heritages. The results may be
building a map of the community (a king of urban parish map), or using the web as a tool to incrementally open and
continue gathering information on a local map that, theoretically, infinitely enriched content generated by citizens. Even
in these cases, the theme of the visualization plays a crucial role: citizens themselves require visual tools, maps,
diagrams that shows the main issues discussed and promotes a more direct exchange with the public administration.
Much more complex and interesting may be the theme of visualization of self-organized forms of participation via the
web, as, for example, is the case of Twitter: the growth of self-organized daily tweets around urban themes is
exponential and diversified. A typical example is the use, by hundreds of citizens of Milan, of the hastag #giralo
(represented by #; used to indicate a common grouping of tweets; for example, #city might represent tweets related to
city themes) to share geo-referenced information on local traffic. The growth and self-organization of the use of Twitter,
which is facilitated by the extreme rapidity of tool and the opportunity to use via mobile, is a great potential to collect and
analyze information on the use of local urban landscapes, on new forms of citizenship, new images and and new
unconsolidated identities. Inside of a slow transition to forms of urban landscapes knowledge that takes care of relational
frameworks and and qualitative analysis of networks of relationships between spaces and subjects visual translation
methods are increasingly important as open to strong innovations and adaptations. The contribution of the dynamics of
participation goes far beyond the simplistic expectations of a democratic enlargement useful only to the stabilization of
the consent: crowdsourcing (Figure 3) is becoming, very quickly, a working tool that people use to enhance and
reinterpret the spaces of everyday life. Work on the interaction between urban structured forms of knowledge and
collective unorganized knowledge means addressing a broad range of new issues:
- how to adapt our tools of analysis to fully understand an urban landscape that no longer made up of sums of objects,
but by complex relations between subjects and spaces?
- how not to underestimate the creative use of new technology and its rapid adaptation to shared forms of participation?
- is it possible to use visualization to add cognitive and social benefit to informal processes of local knowledge
generations (Figure 4) ?
- what are the best ways to combine traditional quantitative analytical method with the need to 'make visible' the new
ways of perceiving and experiencing the urban landscape?

19

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 1. Front page of Mappa-Mi, a web-based participatory mapping project in north Milan by EUMM and DiAP / Politecnico di Milano

Figure 2. The visualization of a SWOT analysis of urban landscape in a neighborhood of Milan, carried out by EUMM and DiAP / Politecnico di
Milano with the participation of citizens. The items displayed are: positive in green, negative ones in red and yellow the proposals.

20

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 3. The Milanese Urban Region drawn by the the inhabitants through the largest on-line crowdsouring tool: Openstreetmap

Figure 4. Infographics on the participatory evaluation of the critical aspects of an area undergoing transformation in the urban belt of Milan ( Source:
Arch. Pietro Speziale / Daniele Villa)

21

MIC _ My Ideal City

References
EVANS-COWLEYJ., GRIFFIN G., Micro-Participation: The Role of Microblogging in Planning. Available at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1760522, February 12, 2011.
GABI S., THIERSTEIN A., KRUSE C., GLANZMANN L., Governance Strategies for the Zrich-Basel Metropolitan
Region in Switzerland in Built Environment n. 2 157-171, 2006.
HEALEY P., Urban Complexity and Spatial Strategies, Routledge, London 2007.
THIERSTEIN A., FORSTER A., The image and the region. Making mega-city region visible, Lars Mller Publishers,
2008.

22

MIC _ My Ideal City

Constants in Future Cities and Regions

Liliana Bazzanella, Luca Caneparo, Giuseppe Roccasalvaa, Politecnico di Torino High Quality LabTerritorial Integrated Project
Franco Corsicoa, SiTI Higher Institute on Territorial System for Innovation

1. Introduction
The paper resumes some of the conversations the authors had in three years of research, preparing their coming book
Future Cities and Regions, based on the review of best participatory planning practices worldwide. The case projects
are selected and discussed with the protagonists across four leading issues: Simulation, Scenario and Visioning,
Government and Governance, and Scale. The case-oriented discussion is a peculiarity of the book , contributing to give
shape to future cities or regions. The aim is to build a critical thinking on how urban planning, policy and design issues
are faced differently or similarly throughout every cases studied. The book include the description of computer models
and media, socio-political experiments and professional practices which help communicating the future effects of
different design, policy and planning strategies and schemes with a wide range of aims: from information, through
consultation, towards active participation. The cases have confirmed that simulation tools can impact on local
government and can drive new forms of glocal governance, shaping and implementing future plans and projects at
different scale and time span. The following paragraphs will point at some of the constant thoughts the authors had
around the selection and editing of the books case studied and related issues.

2. Simulation
Can a model be useful to simulate the likely effects of different design, policy and planning strategies, allowing the
exploration of consequences? At what extent the promises of simulation for developing policies and plans meet the
capability to define evolving strategies that decision-makers can apply when dealing with present rapidly evolving cities?
Simulation concerns the tools that each cases studied have experimented to evaluate and engage a possible future. The
authors aims was to highlighting not only technically but procedurally the approach used, e.g. to collect data or indicators
or draw options or procedures. The interdependence of the land use, transportation, and environmental systems is
extensively described in relation to quality of life and economic growth, but there is still lacking of social behavioural
theories which turn static plans and policies to a dynamic one.
Assignments: Giuseppe Roccasalva: main contribution- editing ; Liliana Bazzanella and Franco Corsico: advisors and final revision; Luca
Caneparo: initial draft.

23

MIC _ My Ideal City

It is often pointed out that socio-economic systems would not be predictable, because the reaction of people to
information about forthcoming states of the system would invalidate the forecast. Moreover, present evolving society is
no longer partially predictable or typified. New citizen may not recognize themselves in any traditional political party. The
era of a simple, widely acknowledged, main political issue has passed.
The selected cases studied are simulation based but they all make easy to implement new forms of dialogue . In general
terms, it is possible to distinguish two interpretations of simulation activities which are performed and described in the
book cases studied: simulations which are process oriented or simulations which are results oriented.
The first category (process oriented) it is mostly dedicated to use tools which are dedicated to simplify complex
indicators and explain invisible future implications to broadly large groups of stakeholders. The second (result oriented) it
has got a consistent engagement and structure of power and responsibility, moreover it has tools which are defined for
specific aims, looking to design from detailed urban areas to physical piece of architecture.
It is evident that Canadian case projects, using Metroquest activities or the American case using Environmental
Simulation Center expertises are the most complete cause they have both a deep focus on building consensus process
and deliver a physical results for shaping the future growth of cities.
However, it is interesting to see that the variety of tools presented in the book are not always specifically driven to deliver
results or empower citizen knowledge. Most of simulation tools are amplifying human logic and awareness, assisting any
possible interpretation of the complex variables of urban issues. Today, it the authors conviction that most successful
and common use of simulation tools are dedicated to this role.
In more general but rather technical terms, the simulation tools have not developed as friendly as it seems and
consequently are not widely spread out. ICT make easy to share information but the devices will ever be able to pose
questions, perhaps some answers. Often, tools are a collection of different applications under the same interface while
other cases (very few) have designed a specific software which encompass different selected issues and solutions.
Simulation tools embody mathematical models to generate a vision for a future city or region. Often, the generated future
have been placed within a specific context, e.g. economic, social, geographical, morphological etc. It has to be clear that
none of the mathematical models can ever be as predictive as the real world mechanism but they can be a nearly and
fair picture of the future.

3. Scenarios and Visioning

What are the approaches to help managing the deep uncertainties that metropolitan areas are facing?
Cities are facing a number of long- and mid-term decisions, it is the authors conviction that the ultimate success of
Future Cities relies on how tomorrows choices can be forecasted. Given the complexity of metropolitan issues, the
number of variables that had to be considered, and a mid-term timeframe, it becomes evident that the final prediction is
challenging. The book cases studied confirm the complexity since from the definition of terms as Scenario and Visioning.
The authors of this paper, which have common but rather different background experience, finally agree that Scenario
building is meant to be both in terms of vision and foresight methods and as designing-planning tools to support
decision-making processes. In fact, both the European and American cases studied described that Scenarios have been
experimented to organise and communicate information, to facilitate the discussion of planning options across
24

MIC _ My Ideal City

stakeholder groups, professional disciplines, and levels of decision-makers. However, most cases nominated Visioning
what is meant to be Scenarios for others and vice versa. As the Metroquest case study shows, Scenarios and Visions
has to do with the quest of public understanding of issues, the collective identification of the principles in order to make
educated choices. In this regards, Scenarios and Visions play a communicative action. To some extent, it is possible to
generalize that in all cases, Visioning is relaying on an intuitive approach with a robust and consistent picture of the
future while Scenarios are often focusing on the pathway leading to a possible picture. In both cases, authors have
found that leading protagonist of each cases studied, consciously or not, have a clear understanding of strategic role of
Scenarios and Visioning in planning practices; this is crucial ingredients for the success of any process.

4. Government and Governance

As long as Governance is considered a process of integrated urban management:: what lessons can city leadership
drawn from the comparison of different approaches to urban policies, metropolitan government, municipal finance,
community development and local democracy?
First of all, the role played by facilitators, public officials, private sectors and the feedbacks in terms of governance is
similarly different all over the case studied; however, whatever the urban legislation in force, in Europe or the USA,
governments responsibility tends to express itself at the local level, by defining which areas should be developed for
housing, commerce, services or industry while local administrations claim development in terms of welfare capital, better
taxes or reinvestment in infrastructure, public transport or services which cannot be entirely manageable at the local
level.
Secondly, the public management focus on main issues in similar different ways cause of the actors and scale of
transformations. Mobility issues are a similar target all over the cases studied but its measurements for sustainable
development depends, for instance, on the oil vulnerability factors (Australian case study) or it time consuming travel
routes (some of the American case study).
It is evident that no matter the case study, the large scale projects have explicitly or implicitly government intervention at
the intersection between public sector and private markets. This is often an hidden approach which become evident in
the book selected best practices. However it is possible to define some promising conditions for turning government into
what it might be called glocal governance.
When local administrations decide to expose themselves in designing or managing urban issues, it is likely to expect at
least some aware process. A responsive public actors is a pre-condition for governance. Most of local authorities of the
book cases studied were conscious of community planning and sustainable choices. In order to encourage all levels of
government to work together and in partnership with actors form economic and civil society, it is important to focus the
aims and areas in a relatively clear time span. In fact, all the cases have named projects with the local focus or issues
and the ultimate date where transformation will take place. Most of the experiences reported in the book stress the
temporal and spatial values of planning. These strategic spatial plans (as Stokholm RUFS 2050 and CHIGAGO 2020)
have provided an emphasis on place qualities and the spatial impacts of investments. They also carry a potential for redefining main issue and agendas down from the national or state level and up from the municipal level.

25

MIC _ My Ideal City

The authors of this paper consider the case projects discussed in the book cutting-edge within an emerging stream: new
power leaderships. All projects are differently driven and funded, by local government or agencies, by the Information
Society and some Software companies, National Science bodies etc... However all these actors are sensitised towards
effective policies, plans or projects. As Jessob wrote, the simple fulfilment of social actors demands is not governance
but rather polarizing forces towards an overarching objective give chances to the role of governance. In most of the book
cases studied, the project management made things happening differently because it encompass demands of various
social groups but also boost alliances and common thinking through communication. The deal of technology resources
required by simulation and by media for communication make governance not accessible to all social actors in an equal
manner, in this regards, in many cases, tools for governance are thought for specific actors, classes, or programmes
regardless the amplitude of participation. Citizens are reducing confidence in government because it is often perceived
as detached from the local issues. Public engagement process may build relationships of trust with the government and
within the communities with different and even conflicting interest. Often, conflict are not redeemed but doubts are
insinuated and the antagonist position understood. Subsequently, a number of methodologies, as argumentative,
collaborative, deliberative, or participative (Healey, 2003) has been experimented to actively involve the
stakeholders. Information, collaboration, participation or consensus building are methodologies that have innovated
governance processes.

5. Scale
In an extensive meaning, the scale includes geographical as well as further dimensions, i.e. the number and
heterogeneity of stakeholders involved in the practice, the roles of Power, the different tools and media needed and so
on. In fact, Firms, agencies, institutions and governments address differently the relationships between local and
regional policies and planning. Most of the projects started from regional issues and withdraw local implications while
other focused on an intermediate scale of urban development. Often, the starting point is a regular grid placed on the a
vast piece of land. The larger is the grid the general are the issues and vice versa. Grid are feaseable for mateatical
simulations tools but they hardly follow the boundaries of economic, environmental or social problems.
Furthermore, the scale of complex systems makes public administrations chose different strategies. Peripheries and the
intermediate city demonstrate that planning socio-economic systems is rarely possible, since it is not-working the
expected way. Helbing says that Socio-economic systems often self-organize, and that their behaviour is robust to nottoo-large perturbations. While forcing complex systems tends to be expensive (in case of strong systemic resistance) or
dangerous (in case of unexpected systemic shift), it makes much more sense to support the self-organisation of the
system instead. Such a self-organising approach encourages the intrinsic dynamics in the system, and is demonstrated
to be resource-efficient. Therefore, a reasonable way to manage complexity is to guide self-organization and facilitate
coordination (Helbing, 2010).
In our individualistic societies, many questions are related to the different scale of organizational bodies. To what extent
people are merely passive users of changes or an actors who are able to modify or even create transformations? The
common belief says the sum of the parts produces a comprehensive result; it is feasible that the future map of

26

MIC _ My Ideal City

stakeholders is non geographical but rather a net, often virtual (as social network), which informs the planning process
and make average choices.

6. Conclusion
Following up the implementation of each cases studied, the authors considered them successful because they manage
to set up partnerships with local and regional governmental agencies and-or Metropolitan Planning Organizations, they
produce operational urban model more advanced than others and set up a highly interdisciplinary collaboration with
educational bodies. However the efficiency of these experimental and forerunning cases studied will be judged in a long
time perspective which is even longer than the time span each cases is trying to forecast in their plan.
In outline form, here are some reasons that the authors believe the book has been successful so far:

Most importantly, it is highlighted the main demands dealing with urban issues and how simulation models
criticize present land use planning systems.

It will be a good referential book for public administrations aiming at starting a communicative action.

As long as it is a case oriented discussion, projects advice on probable common mistakes regarding the
leadership, the management and the processes.

References
FORESTER J.,The Deliberative Practitioner: Encouraging Participatory Planning Processes, MIT Press, Cambridge
1999.
JESSOP B., A neo-Gramscian approach to the Regulation of Urban Regimes: accumulation strategies, hegemonic
projects, and governance, (1996a) in M. Lauria ed., Reconstructing Urban Regime Theory, New York: SAGE (in press).
JESSOP B., NIELSEN, K., AND PEDERSEN, OVE K., Structural Competitiveness and Strategic Capacities: the cases of
Britain, Denmark, and Sweden, in S.E. Sjstrand ed., Institutional Change: Theory and Empirical Findings, New York,
M.E. Sharpe 1993, 227-262.
HEALEY P., Citt e istituzioni Piani collaboraivi in societ frammentate, Dedalo, Bari 2003.
HABERMAS J., Teoria dellagire comunicativo, (Vol. 1 e 2), Il Mulino, Bologna 1997.
HELBING D., S. BALIETTI, From Social Simulation to Integrative System Design, White Paper of the EU Support Action
\Visioneer.
HELBING D., Managing Complexity: Insights, Concepts, Applications, 1st ed. Springer, 2007.
HELBING D., et al., Evolutionary Establishment of Moral and Double Moral Standards through Spatial Interactions, in
PLoS Comput Biol 6.4 (Apr. 2010).
BAZZANELLA L., CORSICO F., CANEPARO L., ROCCASALVA G., Future Cities and Regions : Simulation, Scenario
and Visioning, Governance and Scale, Springer, New York 2011.

27

MIC _ My Ideal City

Ideal cities - ideal citizens? Participatory urbanism and activity patterns in a

post-utopian European context
Kathrin Golda-Pongratz, Universitat Politcnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain/ Clemson University,
SC/USA

We accept contemporary conditions as something given, as reality just no utopia, that would be too easy.
Lucien Kroll, 1982

Post-Utopianism?
To call our contemporary European context a post-utopian one can be understood as a provocation. What has
happened to utopian thinking? What kind of city visions predominate at the beginning of the 21st century? And what are
ideals and models that we aim for?
In these first decades of the 21st century, everything seems to be technically possible and it is rather technology itself
that confronts us with the limits that the technical progress has produced. Within an uncertain state between
technological achievements and the limits of growth, some of the predominant discourses seem to recall form, order and
the importance of history as guidelines to urban development.
The mock up of the facade of Potsdam's seventeenth century city palace as the first step into its literal reconstruction
presents us the reconstruction of a vanished past and, as a consequence, the transformation of a palimpsest of styles
and traumatic political influences of the 20th century into a cityscape that wipes out such traces in favour of a historicist
new perfectionism, a new ideal. Is it the one we should follow today?
Only forty years earlier, in the late sixties, the architects and artists collective Haus-Rucker-Co (Bogner, 1992) made the
"Balloon for Two" pop out of a 19th-century building in a traditional Viennese neighbourhood - a clear gesture to show
that new ways of living are desired, that tradition has to give way to new forms of both more individual and more
uncaged forms of living.

Figure 1. Mock up of the facade for the reconstruction of Potsdam's 17th century city palace. Photo: Kathrin Golda-Pongratz, 2011

28

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 2. "Balloon for Two". Installation of Haus-Rucker-Co, Vienna 1967

We also know to what extent individualism and our missing respect for territorial conditions has changed our urban
landscapes and our idea of the urban during the last decades. Rather than as liberation from collective traditional living,
it acts as a motor for urban sprawl and a worldwide-extended suburbanism and a loss of the notion of the civitas, the
essence of urban cohabiting and sharing of common responsibilities and rights.
On the other hand, the idealized demarcation of one's own territory is inherited in the human existence, also of the
enlightened human being. Private property is also a motor of development and of (not only destructive) speculation in
the cities, in complex urban environments. It is when man also searches for establishing or maintaining roots in the
territory and a social context and starts to take on responsibilities.

Individualism and civitas

Let us discuss the relation between individualism and civitas and figure out if maybe there are, apart from increasing
expressions of a ragged individualism in our Western urban societies, also forms of positive forces of appropriation, of
resistance and of new expressions of romanticism other than the one Bruno Taut envisioned in the early 20th century.
Can we make out positive potentials of individualism in urban context, maybe even state that the individualized citizen is
even better prepared for imagining the future? Is the future maybe much more determined by the enlightened citizen's
successful integration into urban processes than by urban form?
Bruno Taut's drawing entitled "Die grosse Blume" (The large flower) incorporates an early 20th century vision of a selfsustainable, nature-oriented city, a sacred place that absorbs solar energy and is, at the same time a joyful temple, a
place were the notion of property does not exist anymore and were technology combines with sensuality and helps the
inhabitants to develop their living and working without constraints, as Bruno Taut notes down on his drawing. An ideal
29

MIC _ My Ideal City

city, as it seems, and still we wonder how its citizens would live in it. Taut, voluntarily or not, questions the concept of
civitas and romanticizes the monumental character of the city and its potential as a complete form.
With industrialization, massive migration and modernization, cities have grown, have lost shape and even those with
monumental heritage and rich layers of history have reached stages of collapsation. Therefore, throughout the 20th
century urban agglomerations have been claiming for development strategies that would respond to the needs of an
increasing mobility, provide housing solutions and still maintain and further develop their integrity and role as cultural,
economic and political centres.

Figure 3. "Die Grosse Blume". Drawing by Bruno Taut, 1919

Figure 4. Publication "Can our cities survive?" by Jos Luis Sert and CIAM. Cover by Herbert Bayer, 1942

30

MIC _ My Ideal City

The 1960s and 1970s were decades when visions were developed and some of them, willingly or not, became physical
realities and had to prove their potential in the urban reality. Paul Rudolph's "Lower Manhattan Expressway" project
(1970) influenced an interesting, but also very conflictive and discussable built mega structure that provides housing on
top of a major motorway in Berlin: the "Autobahnberbauung Schlangenbader Strasse" (1976-82) by architect Georg
Heinrichs, that unites both the existence of motorized mobility and the creation of massive housing (Van der Ley and
Richter, 2008).
Superstudio's provocative collage "The continuous monument. An architectural model for total urbanization" (1969) has
become a both stunning and shocking reality in urban agglomerations like Benidorm on the Spanish coast, were the
desire of growth and of the domination of a privileged landscape meets the need for mass solutions and the
rationalization of such desires, also the rationalization of contemporary individualism. This is when we have to accept
that massification and standardization seem to resolve the contemporary urban needs and it is when the question, what
kind of citizen we want to be, becomes each time harder to respond to. And this is also when we probably start
questioning which is the urban world we want to be living in.

The role of (public) housing

Surprisingly enough, official housing solutions seem not to have changed since Shadrach Woods described the
alienation that people suffer in isolated, incomplete and characterless residential zones like in the Parisian outskirts by
quoting Gertude Stein's "There is no there, there" (Woods, 1975, p. 164). Contemporary public housing solutions, even
when declared progressive, future-oriented and socially sustainable, opt for the standardized block.
In the Barcelonese neighbourhood Bon Pastor the city council goes as far as to replace a characteristic working class
neighbourhood from the 1920s, with an incomparably attractive street life and a historically grown identity, by more
rentable standardized housing blocks and no spatial quality at all.
The Programmes of Urbanistic Action (PAU's) in Madrid suggest a programmatic approach to the improvement and
growth of some peripheral neighbourhoods in Spain's capital city, nevertheless there is hardly any approach of including
the (present and future) population into the creation of urban identity. Housing proposals are colourful and innovative in
terms of materials, but conventional and sadly standardized in terms of urban morphology and suggestions of
contemporary forms of living. And they drastically lack an interrelation between the private and the public and therefore
one of the most important and valuable features of the European urban history.

Figure 5. Housing block in the Pau of Carabanchel in the South of Madrid. Photo: Kathrin Golda-Pongratz, 2010

31

MIC _ My Ideal City

Also the idea of choice and of participation has a large urban tradition in Europe, one should think. If we look at the
traditional city house module, for instance in the city of Florence since the Middle Ages (Feldtkeller, 1995), we can see
how a grid of properties and cells with relation to the public space finally ends up defining the streets and the
morphology of the city. If, on the other side, we look at Richard Dietrich's "Metastadt" project for Munich (1970), where a
modular "socio-technical" system proposes a participative and non-hierarchical alternative to the massive housing
projects of its period, we can see how new technical possibilities and the understanding of the traditional role of the
citizen and the importance of his emancipation and autonomy should come to define new forms of urban housing.
The British architect John Turner published "Housing by people" in 1976 (Turner, 1976) and claimed for a complete
change of housing policies, towards total participation and the inclusion of the dweller in decision-making end even the
construction and understands, most importantly, housing not as a product, but as a process and a community-building
activity.

Forms of participatory urbanism

Turner's convictions arose during a long working period in Peru, where he could observe the well-organized self-building
process as a mayor path of making city. Did Turner's ideas hit the ground in Europe? Is such participatory urbanism
possible? And, can we detect maybe even other forms, that deal with existing structures and make its dwellers part of
the process?
The PREVI project (Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda), carried out by an international team of architects in Lima/ Peru
between 1968 and 1973, is a key non-European example within this discussion, as it combines the architectural and
urbanistic definition of space through the designs of internationally renowned architects with the processes of adaptation
and self-building that are inherent in the Peruvian capital's urban development. The outcomes of the transformations
produced by self-building, amplification and adaptation to personal needs is surprising and very consistent, even though
the language of the architects is no longer readable.
The Belgium architect Lucien Kroll has a different answer to participation: as an architect, he understands himself as a
dwellers' consultant, a person who organizes spontaneity and somebody who orquestrates a long process of growth and
transformation. His architecture does not have an architect's handwriting, although there is a recognizable style in his
projects that represents the collaborative experience of participatory building and the responding to individual needs and
desires.
Programmatic urbanism is a contemporary definition of a tendency to understand the post-industrial city within its
conditions of change and the needs of reactions towards these changes, while also responding to its inhabitants needs.
Some contemporary projects prove that planners and city authorities have understood the importance of making people
participate at decision-making within such a programmatic approach as probably the only socially sustainable way of
redefining the urban. The La Mina neighbourhood in Barcelona, an originally isolated mass housing complex in the
Eastern periphery of the city created in the 1970s, has become of recent metropolitan interest through some large scale
projects being developed in its immediate surroundings. The Master plan for urban transformation and inner reform
integrates the residing -predominantly Gypsy- population into the planning process and makes them part of the planning

32

MIC _ My Ideal City

decisions. At the same time, these citizens redefine their own identity, their identification with the city and with their own
traditions and expectations.

Figure 6. La Mina housing in Barcelona before its transformation. Photo: Kathrin Golda-Pongratz, 2003

Figure 7. Neighbours discussing the new urban Master plan for La Mina. Photo: Jornet Llop Pastor JLP arquitectos Barcelona

If we have a look at the biologist, urban theorist and interdisciplinary thinker Patrick Geddes' "Notation of Life" diagram,
we come to understand how thoughts, dreams, acts, deeds and facts constitute human activity patterns. We also come
to understand how important it is to study and comprehend such patterns, in order to strengthen and make successful
citizens' movements and activities and potential for urban negotiations.

33

MIC _ My Ideal City

When citizens negotiate urban decisions by reclaiming urban identity

The feeling of loss or deprivation is often a stronger motor for people's activation and organization than a state of wellbeing and contentment. During the Franco dictatorship and within context of a severe lack of public space, the citizens of
Barcelona developed a strong neighbourhood organization network and tradition of the second half of the 20th century.
The case of the "Forat de la Vergonya" (Hole of Shame) is a most interesting case of a process that combines several
aspects of urban negotiation and a process of continuous participation: firstly, a group of activists filled this place with life
and converted it in a self-governed territory, while the city negotiated the cleared spaces' destiny. People started to claim
for the space as a green and open space with community gardens, a stage and sports facilities. After a struggle over
more than six years, in 2007 the city council adopted the citizens' ideas -without dialoguing- and laid out a park in the
middle of the dense urban fabric of the old city - in a procedure which they called participative urbanism, but in fact was
much more of a non-dialectic struggle. Nevertheless, the original spirit of the space has come back and integrates all
kind of neighbours of this densely populated area. Exchange markets take place regularly and the self-managed urban
garden is an alternative space of more sustainable urban living that attracts residents and visitors.
The prize-winning project "Passage 56" in Paris (2007-2009) by the collective Atelier d'Architecture Autogre is another
example of a community-based project dealing with a passageway that was closed of as unusable space since the
1980s in the heart of the French capital. In an open consultation process people were asked to make suggestions and
the idea came up to create a collectively-managed space that could host meetings, workshops, games and commercial
interchanges and activities related to horticulture. A wooden construction was set up with recycled materials collected by
the residents themselves, which bridges the gap between the two flanking buildings and between the street and a newly
created public garden. The "Passage 56" project reinforces the idea that public space is not a product, but rather
continuously developed as a social, cultural and political production and on a micro scale.
Sometimes also macro scale urban transformations can be re-negotiated by the citizens. The large Frum area in
Barcelona is an emblematic example of how recent transformations blended out the site's history and identity in order to
produce an urbanistic motor for new, supposedly sustainable large scale developments. The traces of former "Camp de
la Bota", where between 1939 and 1953 a total of 1700 anarchists and opponents of the Franco regime had been
executed, were eliminated and overbuilt by solar panels, asphalt and eye-caching architecture.
The Catalan artist Francesc Abad, victims' relatives and other critical citizens had started to claim for a memorial to recall
the tragic identity of this place. Until today, under the pressure and initiative of the Memorial Democrtic1, only in the part
of the site belonging to the neighbouring district Sant Adri this has been made possible by the authorities: in Spring
2010, a commemoration sign and explanations to understand the site's history was erected in the middle of the ongoing
large scale urban development projects. An open process, where it makes sense to acknowledge the traces of history
and the citizens' awareness.

Institution installed by the Catalan government to reclaim and amend the pre-democratic crimes against humanity under the Franco regime.

34

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 8. The Frum area, formerly known as "Camp de la Bota". Photo: Kathrin Golda-Pongratz, 2010

Figure 9. Commemoration sign in the part of the site belonging to Sant Adri. Photo: Kathrin Golda-Pongratz, 2010

The redefinition of public space in contexts of transformation

Changing conditions and civil awareness are capable to transform urban space. Planners should react to such changes,
break the ground for social inclusion and propose rather processes than finished objects and projects. Immigration
brings new needs and spatial requirements to urban agglomerations.
The same happens when emigration takes place, when territories lose population, as it is the case in the German
Ruhrgebiet. As a consequence, a large-scale transformation of the formerly largest mining area in Western Europe has
been started two decades ago. It is a positive and at least partly successful example of a programmatic planning of such
an enormous structural change that has to be understood in the context of global energy and production policies. The
respect to the area's identity as a formerly industrial place is crucial. A large-scale structural vision and the setting up of
a development strategy are the basis for participative inclusion on several levels.
Small scale interventions like the "Eichbaumoper" project in Mlheim an der Ruhr (raumlaborberlin, 2008-2009), where
a conflictive and depressing underground train stop, with the involvement of the local theatre, was temporarily converted
35

MIC _ My Ideal City

into a space of music, is one such example. The run-down state and insecurity of the Eichbaum station are a
consequence of the low-density and shrinking condition of the area. The project gave another awareness to such
conditions and proved to work as a low-cost, highly integrative idea. "Opera means the interrelation between space,
composition, the scenic interpretation of a history and the biography of the place", the organizers explained. Peoples'
wishes and ideas were equally part of the project as the fostering of other uses, such as a gallery, a cinema and a space
for public lectures.
On a large scale, old mining complexes of the Ruhr district have been converted into a post-industrial and cultural
landscape, where ephemeral as well as programmatic uses find place, where hybrid responses are possible and where
a certain utopian thinking proposes a culturally active, sustainable, integrative and liveable future.
In such a sense and with all its conflicts and contradictions, this kind of urban landscape incorporates maybe more the
idea of an ideal city, an ideal urban environment, as the seemingly perfect cities, Barcelona, Rome, Paris, or Venice.
Those will have to rethink their future under the perspective of mass tourism, will have to be more careful in sensing their
citizens' activity potential both as enlightened individuals and as urban collectives and encounter strategies to stop what
is widely described as a loss of authenticity.

Bibliography and image sources

BOGNER, D. (ed.), Haus-Rucker-Co, Ritter Verlag, Klagenfurt 1992.
FELDTKELLER, A., Die zweckentfremdete Stadt, Campus, Frankfurt/ New York 1995.
GEDDES, P., Cities in Evolution, Williams&Nogate, London1915.
KROHN, C., Case Study II: Berlin, der grosse Hgel oder die Idee, eine Autobahn zu berbauen, in VAN DER LEY S. &
M. RICHTER (eds.), Megastructure Reloaded, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2008.
KROLL, L., Fr eine Entmilitarisierung des Bauens, in "Freibeuter" n. 12, 1982.
LAMPUGNANI V. & M. NOELL (eds.), Stadtformen, gta Verlag, Zurich 2005.
PEHNT, W., Lucien Kroll. Bauten und Projekte, Hatje, Stuttgart 1987.
ROVIRA, J., Sert 1901-1983, Electa, Milan 2000.
STEMPL, M., Nicht auf dem Boden, sondern in der Luft. Drei exemplarische Raumstadt-Projekte, in VAN DER LEY S. &
M. RICHTER (eds.), Megastructure Reloaded, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2008.
TURNER J., Housing by people, Marion Boyars, London 1976.
WOODS S., The man in the street. A polemic on urbanism, Penguin, Baltimore 1975.
Websites:
http://www.publicspace.org
http://repensarbonpastor.wordpress.com

36

MIC _ My Ideal City

New Delhi 2011.

Creative and vibrant synergies as possible solutions for urban planning
Claudia Roselli, University of Florence, DUPT, School of Planning and Architecture, UD, New Delhi

Figure 1. New Delhi view

New Delhi 2011: the Commonwealth Games are over, waiting for the final results of 2021's Master Plan, the city is in
complete status of transformation.
Delhi was born in the shape that we see today only during the late 30's, pressed to change herself after the partition with
the arrival of migrants from Pakistan: at that time numerous colonies were build to accommodate refugees and the
solution of an institutionalized plan appeared as a necessary answer for shaping the new capital.
At that time Delhi Development Authority was formed as an entity to take care of the future development of the city and
as an instrument valid to compose new Master Plan for the city, from that period at least three DMP's were written and
composed, the last one is still in charge and will be valid till 2021.
Delhi became also an attractive pole for the global events, for her strategical geographical position and for her
importance in the sociopolitical path, the city hosted the Asian Games on 1982 and the Commonwealth Games at the
end of 2010.
During the last years, many changes happened interconnected with the necessary adjustment of the life standard and
the asset of the superficial appearance of the city: the new Indian middle class, the private investors and the builders, of
course, saw this occasion as a new plat for gaining money and for increasing their earnings, these aims are not the
same of the commune people, infact the profound needs of the poor are connected with the simplicity of livelihood as:
37

MIC _ My Ideal City

houses, all the infrastructural services and the primary benefits as water supply and electricity.
The gap it's that all this renewal are not really made following the principles exposed in the Master Plan, absolutely not
respecting the necessity of the poor people and passing over the budget that was calculated for the games; now entire

Figure 2. Informal barber shop under the flyover

part of the city are blocked in sleeping yard investigate into corruptions.
Before and after the inauguration of games, yards were closed for bribery's problems connected with the hunger of
money of the private investors and builders, involved in the role of developers.
For that reason some spontaneous group formed by themselves to fight against this problems; can be quote the social
collective called The Coalition against Exclusion and Violations caused by the Commonwealth Games: these coalition
was formed looking for the human rights violation under the actions done during the preparation and the changes for the
big event. The group claim attention to the incredible growth of the found dedicated to this purpose, that effected on the
poor and middle class people that have to pay for the huge economic deficit caused by the misappropriation of public
funds and illegal charges, fighting against the appropriation of money took from the found dedicate to the scheduled
caste cause.
In the more large consents, these sportive and massive occurrences, effected the composition and development of the
city in a negative way: inhabitants are forced removed from their place, cutting the relation between areas and relative
physical association with the space, street vendors are put away from their usual paths, beggars are violently push away
from the center of the town. The contemporary global metropolis are represented by the interactions of all the different
kind of energies, these actions against poor reflect the desire of a small group of people that cannot truly represent the
complexity caused by the multiple ethnicity and multiple social mixture layers that compose the city of Delhi today.
During the CWG, happen what happened for the previous Asian Games on the 80's, the concept is expressed in the
phrase written by Union Minister Kapil Sibal, on the Indian Express on January 20, 2007, referring to the plans for the
38

MIC _ My Ideal City

Asian Games he said that the plan was made without thinking to the totality of the people living in the city.
At that time was completely neglected the prescription of 1962's DMP and occurred also the same basic lack of respect
against poor citizens that happen for the preparation of the CWG of October 2010.
As an explanation the phrase written in the official report: How can a city in an attempt to appear world class for
foreign tourists discriminate against poor, hard-working citizens in the name of beautification? (The 2010 Commonwealth Games: Whose Wealth? Whose Common? Written by Housing and land Rights Network, South Asia Regional
Program, Habitat International Coalition).

Figure 3. Solution of everyday planner

Following the words, incised on the metal shelter spread all around the city, the common expectation was a city "more
clean and more green", but contrarily to this many trees are displanted for realizing new flyover and to construct new
infrastructure aims to reach the global standard level; probably the unique positive improvement connected with the
general urban negative downs , was the metro lines development that is one of the infrastructure interconnection that
work well on the Delhi's metropolis today.
Someone dreams on Delhi 2050, imagining new connectivity paths and new measures to settle oneself and to move
around; group of international experts combine the data of the present situation in Delhi to understand the future
prevision regarding transport infrastructure, building laws, health, water system management, environment, energy,
anthropology, archeological heritage, thoughts on public space. Discussion and platforms finalized to come up with
certain previsions for the city of Delhi, following the online statistics anyone wish a new Olimpic Games in Delhi on 2052,
because this event starts to became a real injuries at least for all those people who are not involved in the economical
growth interconnected with the games.1
The big people decide who is poor , how poor they are and if, when and what they need.
They decide which slum can stay and which need to be resettled and when. They decide what constitutes minimum
services" (Verma, 2002).
1

Statics reported from the website: www.delhi2050.com

39

MIC _ My Ideal City

Verma2 developed an entire book on slums describing how unequal, undemocratic and unconstitutional rights
characterize the contemporary urban Indian development, the header is addressed to these "big people" as an open slot
explaining how these people have in their hands the possibility and the responsibility to write an happy ending. The
authentic situation in New Delhi today demonstrate the opposite and the warm interrogative is which is the role of the
commune citizen in this change. There is a traditional Indian behavior called jugaad, these behavior can be the answer
as a practical attitude or as a research of solutions through lateral thinking rather a concatenation of free mental images
and thoughts. Jugaad means achieve simple and secret dreams realizing the daily aims with the only resources that are
available at hand: switching on the creativity and the imagination to answer to the insurgent needs or forming dreams
according to the demands and pressing situations. Jugaad is the attitude to do rather than to think, a physical energetic
approach related to the actions, as if the results are more closely connected to the actions playing for gain the results in
itself, rather than to the satisfaction tied to achieving the objective. Considering the development of the facts as a change
necessary to rotating prospective or to adding new elements to the surface of the reality, setting in motion synergies to
trigger transformative mechanisms.
I have no money, but I want to go to the cinema. What should I do?, or I would like a shop on while for selling my
greenery or I need a land for growing vegetables. The possible actions developed in relation to the achievement of
these needs, wishes and dreams are called Jugaad or the art of acting, the art of getting by; a multiple behavior
triggering social and might economic changes in practices; which probably not will give the money for the cinema tickets
but still will put in motion situations able to transform society and human relations. For not Indian is very difficult,
understanding deeply what Jugaad is: it's seams like an urban character legend, but it's still existing: last year when the
taxi driver arrived in front of the train station in New Delhi, I discovered that I had forgotten the wallet in my house located
in the opposite side of the city; the taxi man once having realize that it was too late to turn back without taking the risk,
for his passenger, to loose the train, he reached in his pocket a few amount of rupees crumpled, hiding in the folds of his
brown pants. Was a few hundred rupees, just the necessary amount to reach Kolkata and to take another taxi but the
example is profound connected with the collective spirit of Jugaad. This personal history, written trough an ethnographic
cultural approach it's an example of the mixofilia3 one of the element more attracting in Delhi, the sequence show the
complete acceptation of the Indian way of living, imagining that the life can always give another ace for play on the daily
game.
What is Jugaad urbanism and in which way this attitude can effect on the future urban plan, is an application of this
character as an informal instrument for the micro-planning situation.
The source of Jugaad can be identify from the grassroots, effecting on everyday small urban changes implemented by
the singular individuals or group of people able to promote the city's evolution.
Changes can be successfully implemented, identifying the best potential transformations that are express in a silent
manner, starting from the observation of all these actions that are initiated spontaneously or triggered by artistic
collectives or bottom-up groups working in this field: across the contemplation of relational dynamics or across the

From Verma, G. D. (2002), Slumming India, A Chronicle of slums and tehri saviours. New Delhi: Penguin Books.
as a not-permanent status of possible sociological and antropological interactions between diverse culture. Phenomenon that happen in
certein special historical periods: giving the occasion to stay togheter in the same city or in the same geographical areas mixing experiences,
memories and visions for the present of the city. ( as Zygmunt Bauman suggest at the conference: "La qualit dellintegrazione scolastica" on
Rimini on 16-11-2009).

3Mixofilia

40

MIC _ My Ideal City

creative answers given to the unacceptable rules imposed by the contemporary metropolitan violent and irrespective
situation. In this sense Jugaad urbanism, can be the Indian representation of the Michel De Certeau4 theory's on the
creative use of the space, interpreted by the ordinary citizens: reading on the architectural compositional lines, looking at
the invisible tracks in the places, that can tell on the previous behaviors played on a space, that if maybe repeated in the
future many times in the same manner or in the same zone can define the evolution of the new urban lineage
determining the probable transformation of the use of certain areas of the city.

Figures 4-5. Life in the space In between

There are spaces, in the contemporary cities, that exist and breath as entities in between valid as potential spaces,
rather spaces imagined or depicted for, real spaces or spaces experienced by the inhabitants and by their intentions5
These places can become a zones where ordinary citizens take the spaces that they need, inventing new ways of
dwelling, new occupational logic or reactive presences, interpreting just adding to the reality another imperceptible level:
the imagined and not suddenly perceived dimension of the unconscious realm of the creative every day planner; realm
that can be showed trough the human bodies and their trails,the presences of the objects in the space or simply by the
semi-permanent structures that could represent as a liveable ephemeral space constructed by citizens for the necessity
to satisfy their primarily needs or to realize the wishes of the whole community.
This transformative and spontaneous comportment is very strong eradicate in some parts of metropolitan India,
especially in those areas less subject to control, that means informal or semi-informal settlements, where the Jugaad
urbanism is a way of life to survive, that can be interpreted as a resourceful strategy, following the Yona Freedman's
thoughts: the answers for the future metropolis are in the poorest place where people use the architecture of survival.
The role of architects, planners, engineers, it's to oversee in these actions the potential development or the mechanism
of changes of urban micro planning or design projects.
There are different levels to dream and to live the city: there are people who have voice on it and people who suffer the
decisions and the chances imposed from above - simply they don't know how powerful can be the desire of change.
Appadurai6 wrote theories on the role of contemporary imagination as a necessary reaction to the globalization process
to create imaginative scenarios, rather displacement of places and situations;
their importance and their validity in terms of possibilities, not only for the single individual but contrarily as a collective
Michel de Certeau, L'invenzione del quotidiano, Edizione Lavoro, Roma, 2001.
Leonardo Chiesi, Il progettista riflessivo, Editore Laterza Roma, 2009.
6 Appadurai, A. (1996), Modernity at large. Minneapolis-London, University Of Minnesota Press.
4
5

41

MIC _ My Ideal City

activity: the imagination can be a necessary tool to develop future images for the global cultural changes that today
effecting mostly the geographical zones of the planet.
He defined different groups of people that are united from the same needs and wishes, that he called relational
community; frequently this groups are formed after a big troubling period or during a very difficult urban tension, where
the collective aggregation is fundamental to resist against the absences. Appadurai in his book Modernity in dust,
individualize five panoramas; imaginary landscapes that help in the

reconstruction of the reality: Ethnoscapes,

Mediascapes, Technoscapes, Financescapes and Ideoscapes.

This imaginary words are interpret as supports to create collective solutions following the contemporary metropolitan
existences; in Delhi case this can be really represented in the cultural mix generated by the different immigrants rather in
the interactions of financial interests and fluxes, on the formal and informal way of dwell the city.

Figure 6. Destroyed street in front of the bus stand

The imagination is an indispensable tool in the salvation kit for serious post-disaster situations, as after big earth
quake or storm or tsunami where entire mass of people need to find answer to the difficulties that oppress the
community, linked with the loosing of their intangible heritage and with the destruction of the physical one; for this
purpose it's necessary to learn how to give to the people the possibility and the right to imagine. In that sense in the last
few years, probably for the influences and the reactions caused by the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, groups of
experts on diverse disciplines as architects, sociologists, planners and artists worked together to give new inputs to the
contemporary urban resistance as a ways to react to the injustices and a paths to find more sustainable answers in the
contemporary world of planning.
Real examples in Delhi are represented by new collaborations between original dwellers and different kinds of experts,
actions that can effect on the urban compositional problems: as emergencies on the slums due to the sudden removals
or as a gentrification process that influence some zonal transformations or, in the resettlement colonies, where the list of
need is claimed by the local people without that the government listen them.
On the gentrification urban phenomenon, that effecting all the contemporary global metropolis, there are several
examples in Delhi: Urban Typhoon7 was an experience created to stop this negative flux on the city's body.
The workshop took his name from his organization: a temporary team of people arrive like a natural typhoon in a place,
working together, trying to purpose new solutions for the new urban expansion Khirkee area: that is located in the south
part of Delhi. This zone, till some months ago, was a completely agricultural land and today it's one of the new
Delhi Urban Typhoon was a workshop organized by Khoj and Urbz, more informations on the web report:
http://urbanlab.org/UrbanTyphoonKhirkee2010-highres.pdf .

42

MIC _ My Ideal City

expansion's area of the city.
Team is created by people afferent to various disciplines: as the aims of the workshop was to find a new view for the
neighborhood: combining architectural, sociological, urban and artistic knowledges to solve the problems of the
contemporary changes that effected on this areas. Rather the experience can also be interpreted as a necessary
dialogue in the contemporary metropolis for understanding where the future of the city still can go,the interactions and
the dialogues between local communitarian people living in Khirkee together with the people who have the
knowledge and the capability to recognize the local needs and to put them in the organization of the future urban zonal
plan. The experience is based in a personal interactions and in a action-reaction play, between participant at the
workshop and Khirkee inhabitants; the final result was a public exposition hosted by the artistic association based in the
neighborhood. The problem of this kind of interactions it's always the duration that is often to brief for have a deepen
effect on the present reality of these areas, that needed more long and influent relations.
In the area there is a strong presence of an ancient Maajid, I found stimulating investigate in terms of interrelations
between the symbolic meaning of the Maajid, on her commune and diffuse role, as a religious point for Muslim and in
the new large sense connected on the Khirkee context investigating the social relation between the areas facing each
other in the neighborhoods, as Khirkee Village, Hauz Rhani and Saket. Saket is the zone where is positioned one of the
biggest shopping mall of the city and where is preview a new courthouse. The construction of these building changed
completely not only the urban destination and use of the road paths, but also the link between people and spaces. There
is a profound connection across the opposite banks of the street: from one side there is a shopping mall that represent
perfectly the contemporary globalization status and from another side there are the neighborhoods that are in completely
status of change after the effect caused by these transformations.

Figures 7-8. Labours who embrodier saari

The precedent reality of that zone was deepen rural background because that area was one of the first inhabited place
Illustration 8: Embroderier saari
of the Delhi's urban history, during the workshop's interview, I collected the history of an old woman, she says that the
ancient community missing the previous time when people worked together on the same fields, because the land where
Khirkee is, was a truly agricultural land, she said that the change of land use from agricultural to dwelling paths caused
many shifts including the deficiency of food's variety, that before was possible to found directly from the ground on these
place. The organization along the opposite side of the road was completely different: in the past there are many pottery
43

MIC _ My Ideal City

sellers or vegetable vendors, today only some of them are there hidden by the cued of auto-ricksha or cars that are
standing in front of the mall waiting the clients. The composition of the people who live there was also different: around
the Maajid in the past lived mostly Muslim families that now are shifted in the more popular quarter of Hauz Rani. The
economical relations between the opposite side of the road are also very subtle, the scope was understanding how to
develop new communicative systems as a new urban research challenge: in the mall beautiful and decorated saari
overlooking from the windows, these cloths are frequently produced, stitched and embroidered on the other part of the
road by the informal migrants labors coming there from different state spread all around the country. Migrants who came
here looking for a work and are settled in these area for the reasonable price of the house rent.
Today the situation is still in change because the colony it's not officially recognized as formal one, but the place started
to be estimated as a desirable urban space where living: consequence of this the rent of the houses increased. If the
gentrification process will not be stopped, will be fundamental preserve the tradition: as any tourist will be attract from the
mall that can have a twin exact imagine in every global word cities; in that sense the local voices must be largely improve
to have more weight in the shaping of the urban planning future projects.
Another example is the work developed by the collective based in Delhi: a mixture of local artists and foreign
practitioners: that share knowledge instruments of work and process of self mutual learning.
This way of proceed is a methodology presented from more then ten years before by Sarai Media Collective and CSDS:
this two entities working with local ngo to develop local and grassroots power across artistic and media experimentation.
The result is a work that affecting in the city practically: this collective doesnt really have the power to change the city as
it would like but the work is a permanent open interactive platform on the city that can be interpret as a reliefs valves for
the needs of the most who live in the poorest neighborhoods.
Awakening the consciences of people to create a new sensitiveness on these matters, as the main problem is the lack
of listening across different social levels till the arrival to the ears of the people who can cover active role in the city's
changes.

Figures 9-10. Life in Kirkhee

As well as all this spontaneous movement are a systems to activate synergies and to open a slot in ordinary life,
seeking for new solutions stirring with the existing super-imposed ones, but not really thought for the total inclusiveness
and urban sustainability.
These practice, in Delhi, are activated through open panels discussions, interactions with commune citizens and artistic
44

MIC _ My Ideal City

experimental actions, as a long experiences of study and permanent observation on the city: free spaces to prove the
ability of the "everyday-planner", rather as micro- interventions or "temporary incursions" on the space.
The unique substantial gap, that actually weighting in the urban transformation, it's the gap between the desires and the
needs of all the citizens and the concrete possibility of realization of the aims dreamed on the practices.
Where the meeting between individual and collective happens, the challenge is how these practices can became more
effective and less utopistic having the real power to change the metropolis?

References
Appadurai, A. (1996), Modernity at large. Minneapolis-London, University Of Minnesota Press.
Bauman, Z. (2009), Quel diverso che ci fa paura. Perch la tolleranza non basta pi, La Repubblica,16-Novembre-2009.
Chiesi, L. (2009), Il progettista riflessivo. Roma: Editore Laterza.
De Certeau, M. (2001), L'invenzione del quotidiano. Roma: Edizione Lavoro.
Friedman, Y. (2006), L'architecture de survie. Une philososophie de la pauvret, Paris, Editions de l'clat.
Verma, G. D. (2002), Slumming India, A Chronicle of slums and their saviours. New Delhi: Penguin Books.
Note: all the images in the article are made by Claudia Roselli

45

MIC _ My Ideal City

Cities Personal Foresights: A case study in Turin metropolitan area

Luca Caneparo, Politecnico di Torino High Quality Laboratory-Territorial Integrated Project

Turins trajectory
Turin area in the past decades has driven several main structural changes, from the Fordist city (Bagnasco, 1986) and
the Regulatory Plan of 1959, which had to deal with uppermost rate of immigration of any large Italian city, to the crisis of
the heavy-industry with the relocation and internationalisation of manufactory. To steer from the possible decline to a
new development, six main strategies were pursued.
First, the new Regulatory Plan of 1995 set a fresh regulatory and zoning framework for land use in the city. The Plan was
redacted by Vittorio Gregotti and Augusto Cagnardi, worldwide renew urban designers, who developed it around a
number of innovative and leading ideas.
Second, new functionalities and regeneration of the city by proxy, for promoting the numerous dismissed industrial
areas to private developers, within clear defined guidelines towards mixed-settlements and land uses. Several dismissed
industrial areas were along or adjacent to the citys main railway line, which runs North to South, at the time cutting
across the city and generating main spatial separation, a barrier to the city as a whole. The two existing railway lines
were doubled and trenched, fourfold increasing in its transportation capacity, transforming the surface into a 12 km long
six-lane arterial road across central areas.
Third, this new axis constitutes the Spines of the new development of the city, connecting the centre to main large
industrial complexes that have concluded their manufacturing cycle. These industrial complexes, which had contributed
to the previous growth of manufacturing city, now are converted and reorganised. Especially four main industrial
complexes along the length of this axe contribute to the creation of the Spines, for over 2.1 million square-meters of
land, instituting the principles for a multi-polar development of the metropolitan area. The destinations of these new
poles were designated about half to residential use, the other half to green and to commercial and tertiary activities.
Fourth, Torinos first metro line, a fully automatic 15 km length route with 21 stations connecting from West to South the
city.
Fifth, two Strategic Plans (1998-2010) drafted, for the first time in Italy, the strategic lines of development, defining the
institutional framework for the active involvement of local governments, public and private sectors, and actors of the
society.
Sixth, in this structure of initiatives sets the candidature plan of the city to host the 2006 Winter Olympic Games, which
was awarded in 1999.
46

MIC _ My Ideal City

SimTorino 2030
The chapter introduces the development and on-going experimentation of an active and dialogue methodology to
support the participation in the decision-making process oriented to the development of Turin Metropolitan area:
SimTorino 2030. The project starts from a collaborative effort between the local Administrations that have the
responsibility of the policies on the metropolitan area at different scales, municipal, provincial and regional, and the LAQTIP Laboratory of the Politecnico di Torino. The collaboration with the Lab is aimed to experiment in the specificity of the
metropolitan area a methodology to orient and drive the development and the implementation of new project, plans, and
policies.
Active
Active approach to the development of the metropolitan area is aimed to overcome a regulatory framework, result of
eighties orientation towards the need of containing the development (Viano, 2008), in favour of an approach to create
and foster opportunities, to bring out the actors and processes, engaging with the dynamics and where possible,
anticipate future changes, to plan and share appropriate actions.
The two Strategic Plans of Turin are ground breaking. They have built a sharing among economic and social actors on a
diagnosis about the strengths and weaknesses of the territory (not just in the physical meaning, of course), and around
the identification of strategic actions to address and redefine identity and vocation in relation to new framework,
globalised and competitive, in which we operate. (Viano, 2008).
An active orientation seeks creating advantageous conditions for future development of the metropolitan area, which
directly concerns the availability of resources and the definition of the agenda for their uses. Both resources and agenda
deal with changed and mutable context, driven by international economic competition, economic recession, and
emerging of actors and processes. Consequently resources are increasingly related to the capability to involve public
and private sectors. Specifically, the capability to renew the North-East quadrant of Turin relies on the interrelation of
four combined action lines:
(1) improving public spaces, non just architectonically, but economically and socially too, starting with funding from
European and local projects;
(2) the reuse and requalification of the large dismissed industrial areas between Turin and Settimo, summing up to
about one million square meter, creating new polarities, whose construction is expected to produce the resources
for the reorganisation of the mobility and transportation;
(3) new arterials and requalification of existing ones, the Spina boulevard in extension to the number 11 national
road, the Green Ringroad; the relevance of arterials as a connectivity tissue of the city, not just a means of
transportation, but axes of valorisation and enhancement; the lesson taught by incremental growth management is
to orient the generative properties of infrastructures towards urban design;
(4) public transportation and intermodal integration, the new Metro Line 2, particularly the construction of new trunk
between Vanchiglia depot and Spina4 gives the opportunity to redesign the accessibility as well as reshaping and
renewing the NE quadrant, especially the existing mixed land-use of commerce, services, workshops, and
residences.

47

MIC _ My Ideal City

The active orientation requires the metropolis involving the resources from the market and directing them towards the
actions. During the first half of the 20th century, the budget of Municipalities largely depended on incomes from taxes on
the real estate. During the last decades, local governments are decreasing their financial backing, imposed by tight
budget constraints (not only in Italy), and needs for capital improvements, while are promoting Public-Private
Partnerships (PPP). This has required a paradigm shift in plans and policies, from legislation and financial incentives,
towards the involvements of private sector and citizens, seeking equilibrium among social-, private- and personalutilities.
Several cities are interpreting the active approach, constructing spatial plans as marketing tools: this is especially
evident in Copenhagen, Lausanne, Milano, and Zrich cases. While, the active methodology being experimented for the
Turin metro area is in the extent of the two Strategic Plans: a shift from the regulatory approach of the 80s and from the
drive to a disjointed project-led incremental approach. An active approach is required to motivate and facilitate, rather
than simply regulate, private or public projects. Moreover, the active framework has been experimented in the view of its
capability to deal with broader environmental objectives and the architectural and social qualities of the metropolis as a
strategic outlook to the coming and evolving challenges and opportunities.
Dialogue
SimTorino adopted a dialogue model, that is a complex model of interacting processes where the directives coming
from the top are informed by the perceptions of problems, possible solutions, and situational constraints coming from
below, and where these directives in turn structure perceptions and the search for solutions at the section level.
(Mayntz, 2006)
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has proposed a three-tier model of citizen
relations in policy-making:
Government-citizen relations cover a broad spectrum of interactions at each stage of the policy-making cycle:
from policy design, through implementation to evaluation. In reviewing this complex relationship, the OECO
survey used the following working definitions:
Information: a one-way relation in which government produces and delivers information for use by citizens. It
covers both 'passive' access to information upon demand by citizens and 'active' measures by government to
disseminate information to citizens.
Government

Citizens

Consultation: a two-way relation in which citizens provide feedback to government. It is based on the prior
definition by government of the issue on which citizens' views are being sought and requires the provision of
information.
Government

Citizens

Active participation: a relation based on partnership with government, in which citizens actively engage in
the policy-making process. It acknowledges a role for citizens in proposing policy options and shaping the
policy dialogue -- although the responsibility for the final decision or policy formulation rests with government.

48

MIC _ My Ideal City

Government

Citizens

Active participation and efforts to engage citizens in policy-making on a partnership basis are rare,
undertaken on a pilot basis only and confined to a very few OECD countries. (OECD, 2001)
SimTorino implements and experiments active engagement of the public, as participants in the planning- and the policymaking process, contributing with their considerable knowledge and valuable expertise. The purposes for seeking active
participation can be organised around the steps of the process that several authors have contributed to well-define
(Patton, forthcoming; Bardach, 2009; McRae, 1997; Bardach, 1996; Dunn 1994; Kweit, 1987). SimTorino has been
structured along five tiers (Fig. 1):
1. Define the domain of the public participation,
2. Empowering stakeholders knowledge,
3. Generate personal foresight,
4. Evaluate foresight, and
5. Map the knowledge.

Empowering
Generate
stakeholders personal foresight
Define the domain knowledge
Map the knowledge
of the public
Evaluate
participation
foresight

Figure 1. Five steps in the process of active participation

1.

Define the domain of the public participation

It is often the case that the public do not have well-formed values and opinions on relatively new plans or policy topics,
until there are involved in the public participation process (Reich, 1988).
SimTorino has contributed to clarify and to define the domain of the planning and policy discourse to the public
participation. For the ease of understanding, the domain is structured as a taxonomy built on top of three abstract
concepts which are pivotal in order to represent the three folds of the public process: Issues, Goals, and Measures. A
Goal specifies the scope and the aim of the policy. For a given goal, the Issue identify the aspects that will be affected by
the policy. Finally, Measures provide a full specification of how to comply with the given policy (Kunz, 1970).
SimTorino presents to the public each of the three abstract levels with multimedia narrative, combining text, pictures, and
video clips. The perspective on issues, goals and measures of the plan or policy contributes to develop a common
language and understanding. Without this common ground, as Parkinson (2006) notes, public participations are going to
generate fuzzy and skewed results, because the general public are not so informed and the positions they take on plan
or policy matters will be different as a consequence.

49

MIC _ My Ideal City

2.

Empowering stakeholders knowledge

The threefold structure canvasses the direct contribution of stakeholders, facilitating them with an intuitive cause-andeffect framework. In particular, citizens can contribute to a policy as expert of their experiences (Sleeswijk, 2005).
Yanow (2003) defines the public insight in and contribution to policy options as local knowledge: the very mundane, but
still expert, understanding of and practical reasoning about local conditions derived from lived experience.
Citizens, when given the opportunity to consider a policy issue, can bring at least three perspectives to bear on the
issue at the same time (Maxwell, 2003):
1. citizens are likely to view an issue from the perspective of a taxpayer, who must pay for the cost of public policy
decision;
2. as consumers or users of government services, they have expectations about the quality of service they want;
3. they are members of a community, local and national.

Figure 2. Engagement - Decision-making role - Knowledge

By bringing three perspectives to bear on issues, citizens as citizens can contribute with their knowledge and expertise
to plan- and policy-making, reconciling conflicting values and proposing options consistent with their priorities, values,
and community. In the threefold structure, the Issue aims to engage the stakeholders, having them contributing with their
own local knowledge: have engaged an issue, considered it from all sides, understood the choices it leads to, and
accepted the consequences (Yankelovich, 1991). Grounding on the epistemological definition of local knowledge,
SimTorino has mapped the issues into the stakeholders local and lived experience, building a Citizen Folksonomy.
SimTorino has requested the public to express their choices, needs, aspirations, and preferences on the four action lines
(1-4). Each individual having interacted with SimTorino system has contributed to populate the Citizen Folksonomy.
Folksonomy (from folk and taxonomy) is a neologism for a practice of collaborative categorisation using freely chosen
keywords. The idea of a folksonomy is to allow the users to describe a set of shared objects with a set of keywords of
their own choice. (Mika, 2007). Technically, the Citizen Folksonomy is implemented as a collaborative tagging system,
where users are permitted to annotate (integrate) Issues, Goals, and Measures, with free-form strings of their choosing.
3.

Generate personal foresights

SimTorino has presented to the citizen the vision of Turin in 2030, generated from her or his choices, needs, aspirations,
and preferences on the four actions lines.
To generate the individual vision of the future SimTorino:
3.1. creates the personal foresight,
50

MIC _ My Ideal City

3.2. simulates the personal foresight, and
3.3. visualises the personal foresight.
3.1

Create the personal foresight

To create the personal foresight, which represents the stakeholders hypotheses of futures (Ogilvy, 1998), SimTorino
maps the individuals choices, needs, aspirations, and preferences on the four actions lines, from the Citizen
Folksonomy into inputs to the simulation models.
The mapping attempts to make explicit the interrelated role of:

Citizen Folksonomy, the structured and formal representation of the citizens knowledge expressed as local
knowledge on the plans and policies,

Simulation Models on the metropolitan area, integrated land use, taxation, real estate, infrastructures, public and
private transportation.

3.2

Simulate the personal foresight

The Personal Foresight gives the opportunity for the public to have direct input into simulations models and to get in
output the foresight for the metropolitan area two decades ahead. The capacity for citizens to have direct access to
simulation, through the Citizen Folksonomy, rather than through intermediary technicians, grounds on the evolution of
micro-simulation.
SimTorino has implemented integrated micro-simulations to answer the demands of the stakeholders (the citizens
especially) on the broad range of interrelated actions (1-4) for the North-East quadrant. This holds especially true for
public insight in and contribution to plans and policies in land use, transportation, and environment, for the capacity of
microsimulation in addressing those issues. As the success of metropolitan plans and policies depends on the
contribution and coordination of micro-level and macroscopic organisations, we consider that detailed simulations are
required. On one hand, this can make the models complex, but on the other, it enables them to serve very distinct and
separate purposes in plan- and policy-making.
For SimTorino, OPUS/UrbanSim (Waddell, 2005) has been implemented for the metropolitan area, because the platform
can simulate the interactions among 1) micro-level and macroscopic organisations, and 2) local and global drivers of the
urban system.
3.2.1

Micro-level and macroscopic organisations

In our individualistic societies, many questions are related to this interaction between microlevel and macroscopic
organisations. (Pumain, 2006) The underlying paradigm of OPUS is that urban dynamics over time and space is the
product of the choices and actions of individuals and organisations: households, businesses, developers, and
government (Figure 3).

51

MIC _ My Ideal City

Demographic Processes
Create

Economic Processes
Create

Households

Governments Regulate

Jobs

Households Locate

Land Use

Jobs Locate

Households Move

Housing

Markets Adjust

Land Price

Governments Build

Jobs Move

Buildings

Developers
Develop Land

Land Cover

Infrastuctures

Figure 3. Linked choices and actions of individuals and organisations (after Waddell, 2004)

The noteworthy feature for the simulation of the Personal Foresight is the level of detail for disaggregation across
individuals and organisations and for spatial disaggregation at the scale of plots and buildings. The high level of detail
empowers the stakeholders direct input into decision-making, because it re-joins the plans and policies to the local and
daily impact on individuals and organisations choices and actions.
3.2.2

Local and global drivers

The simulation is grounded in macro- and micro-economic, the considered discrete choices theories, which has provided
the theoretical rationale, and the methodological rigor.
The different simulated actors make their location decisions within various markets, respectively real estate, labour,
goods or services. The integrated simulation operates as a disequilibrium model in which stock supply and demand are
built gradually over time. The demand for building stocks (respectively residential, industrial, commercial, and services)
is based either on the willingness-to-pay or on the bids (i.e. observed prices, since often willingness to pay is difficult to
measure in practice). Figure 3 outlines the links within markets and actors: the developers invest in plots to be
constructed or refurbished that are demanded by households and businesses, who are also interacting in the labour, the
goods and services markets. On one side, government actors provide infrastructure and services, on the other regulate
the land use and the infrastructures, e.g. the considered Urban3 and the requalification projects of the large dismissed
industrial areas between Turin and Settimo, new arterials and the new Metro line. Further, the citizen defined Personal
Foresight can be based on varying levels of detail that implicitly include land-use and growth plans/policies, such as
destinations, mixed densities, green areas, environmental options, or a range of needs and preferences on
infrastructures and transportation.
SimTorino individually simulates each of the 638,785 family units, the 658,110 workers and the 107,338 buildings which,
since the initial year of 2001, are to be found in the 34 Municipalities of the Turin metropolitan area (Figure 4).
52

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 4. The thirty-four Municipalities of Turin metropolitan area

At the metropolitan scale, SimTorino models the changes of the land use dynamically, where households and
businesses price and accessibility demand functions are estimated. Unbiased parameters are set for the large number
of alternative choices by a random sample of the alternatives, because the actors are both not perfectly mobile and
aware of the market alternatives, to take advantage of available opportunities. A leading aspect is that location choice
and urban development are distinguished, as is the supply side of the real estate market.
The four major drivers of the urban model are demographics, the metropolitan economic makeup and level of activity,
government plans and policies (e.g. regulation, zoning, taxation), and the infrastructure system. Each drive involves a
set of interacting models:

Activity-Based Travel model,

Demographic and Economic Transition models,

Household Mobility and Location models,

Business Mobility and Location models,

Real Estate Development and Land Price models.

53

MIC _ My Ideal City

Travel Model

Accessibility Model

Real Estate Price Model

Real Estate Development Model

Data
Wonderland
Macro-model

Economic Transion Model

Demograc Transion Model

Employment Relocaon Model

Household Relocaon Model

Employment Locaon
Choice Model

Household Locaon
Choice Model

Figure 5. Structure of the models.

At the national and global scales, SimTorino models the impact of over local factors that influence metropolitan
dynamics, so as urban consumption and production, by land and transport market outcomes. If the Personal Foresight
has to foresee two decades of the metropolitan area, it has to consider the broader environment within which that
system is embedded. What possible futures of that wider world could impact the planned system significantly (Couclelis,
2005).
Globalisation with the internationalisation and relocation of the manufacturing plants and the increasing competition at
national, European and international scales, the economic and environmental crises, European strategies and the
federalist government (Jouve, 2005; Pinson, 2005), all contribute to macro dynamics that, while it is outside the control
of metropolitan actors, has a deep and long-term impact on local scenarios and strategies.
SimTorino has implemented Wonderland, originally conceived by Warren C. Sanderson (1994) at the International
Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. Wonderland represents straightforward interrelations among economy,
demography, environment and interactions.
3.3

Visualise the personal foresight

SimTorino has integrated morphological and analytical representations to foresight the consequences of different policy
options on the metropolitan area. Together, these tools visualise the output from the simulated personal foresight to
prefigure what present and future impacts of the policies could be in the citizens place of interest (Fig. 1).
54

MIC _ My Ideal City

The output of the microsimulation is processed into morphological and analytical representations, accessed from a web
page combining geo-web and geo-visual analytics windows. This web page is customised and unique, as the output
from the microsimulation are the results of the citizens input, as defined in the Personal Foresight.
3.3.1

Morphological representation

The fine level of detail of the Personal Foresight and of the microsimulation, that is the spatial disaggregation at the
scale of plots and buildings, are processed into a three dimensional representation of the metropolitan area at 2030.
The approach of SimTorino relies on defining a number of reference typologies that, at large, can match the destinations
from the microsimulation. Every type has at least two degrees of freedom: the density and the shape in the plot.
Furthermore, rarely in the Turin case, a plot arranges just one typology, more often several different ones coexist. The
shape and layout of the typologies within a plot, interconnected by infrastructures and public, semi-private or private
spaces, rely on explicit and implicit knowledge.
SimTorino has developed the research on neighbourhood and district design, to represent explicit and implicit
knowledge and to implement a multi-agent based methodology to generate the 3D morphologies (Caneparo, 2008). The
morphologies are generated as interaction between the design knowledge representation and the interactive generative
system that interprets this knowledge. For a given plot, the system generates the layout and the morphology/ies
matching the output from the simulation (destinations and densities) with the appropriate design knowledge, assigning
each input and knowledge unit as task to software agent. The space of the morphologies for the plot is generated by
interacting agents in the multi-agent model implemented in Java, as a multi-level integration of schedules, in which the
generation can indeed be considered as a nested hierarchy of models, in which the schedules of each agent are merged
into the schedule of next higher level.
In SimTorino the generative procedure creates: 1) realistic 3D representations of buildings and infrastructures, these are
effective and engaging visualisations for the citizens; 2) symbolic 3D representations of either the built environment
(Figure 6). The high level of detail of both realistic and symbolic 3D models empowers the stakeholders direct input into
decision-making, because it re-joins the plans and policies to the local and daily impact on individuals and organisations
choices and actions.
The models can be exported in various formats, including Google Earth and Microsoft Bing Maps, for stakeholders direct
navigation in and interaction with.

Figure 6. Realistic and symbolic representations

55

MIC _ My Ideal City

3.3.2

Analytical Representations

Decision-making processes ground on set of highly complex and interacting layers that contribute to form the opinion on
urban or regional dimensions (e.g. geographic, administrative, demographic, economic, etc.). Usually it is quite difficult
for the stakeholders to build a rationale or even just a sight on these hidden layers. Especially of factors that, despite of
their eluded consideration in the dialogue, are crucial to urban quality and daily life, such as public space, built
environment, social and functional mixit, and accessibility: these are invisible yet powerful drives, contributing to shape
the city.
Microsimulation can provide considerable data on the next decades of Torino, including socio-political aspects, such as
the dynamics of real estate development, density destinations, building envelopes. Further ones are quantitative
information on air quality, commuting time and means, all elements that can positively contribute to inform decisions on
policies, plans, and projects.
SimTorino implements analytical representations to visualise and interact with multi-dimensional geospatial data by
means of Parallel Coordinate Plot (PCP). Parallel coordinate was originally defined by Inselberg (1985) for visualising
high-dimensional geometries in two-dimensions. After Wegman (1990), the leading idea of the PCP is to assign each
data field to an axis. Several axes can be placed side by side: the number is constrained just by the size and resolution
of the screen, thus representing various different fields simultaneously. Each data in a field corresponds to a point on the
respective axis.
3.3.3

4D Interaction

Morphological and analytical representations are coupled: selecting a data field in one view, highlights the corresponding
representation in the other view. This is a particularly clear means of communication for the geo-visualisations, since the
stakeholders can build their understanding of interdependencies, of relationships among planning, design or policy
choices and options. The representation of the simulated personal foresight in its geographical context is underpinned by
the concept of spatial dependence, which assists the stakeholders in interpreting and understanding the individual vision
augmented through the first law of geography, also known as Toblers first law: everything is related to everything else,
but near things are more related than distant things (Tobler, 1970).
Personal foresights explicitly deals with the time dimension of a policy for a place, thus many of their properties are not
solely for geography but common for geography and time. Morphological and analytical representations are interrelated
on the time axis too, and benefit from visualisation and interaction in Google Earth 4D (space + time). 4D Personal
Foresights allows the public to interactively explore the dynamic of the metropolitan area, defining the interrelations
between place, time, and built environment. The users SimTorino can animate the dynamics of the metropolitan area, to
understand where, when, and how her/his 2030 Personal Foresight has been evolving.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, the interaction with morphological and analytical representations is much
more intuitive than its description: in Google Earth selecting individuals or groups of 3D objects highlights in PCP the
associated data fields and the connecting trajectories (sequences of polylines connecting data). And vice versa:
selecting several values or polylines (records) in the analytical representation, highlights the pertaining morphology/ies in
Google Earth (Figure 7).

56

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 7. SimTorino the web page for the 4D interaction with morphological and analytical representations

4.

Evaluate personal foresight

Visualising the foresight for the places defined by the stakeholders, SimTorino has focused the attention of the
stakeholders on the outcomes. This fosters decision-making effectiveness, since public consultations often get stuck in
positional conflict about what (are we for or against a policy?), while SimTorino advances open consideration of
what/how (what happens if? and if not? who is damaged? are there possible compensations or alternatives?).
SimTorino empowers the stakeholder in expressing the desirable and undesirable aspects of the personally defined
vision of the future. They are invited to express their opinions on general and specific aspects. The thousands of
feedbacks, expressed by the citizens, have considered a wide range of instances; we propose to classify them into three
main categories:

input to the four action lines, as options, choices or proposals;

place-based expectations or requirements, especially raised by or related to spaces, buildings or infrastructures, as

emerging from the morphological and analytical representations;

actions, sometimes pertaining to the actuation of project/plan/policy in their time-space dimensions.

Figure 8 ranks the thousands of desirable and undesirable options and expectations, expressed by the users of
SimTorino. The rank derives from the number of occurrences of the same or similar issues. Despite a certain degree of
uncertainty exists in the process of automatically assigning an aspect to a category (and in defining the categories),
particularly for the ones with multiple options and/or proposals in the same sentence.

57

MIC _ My Ideal City

Safe
Cleanairandcity
LowTaxes
Easyandfasteraccessibility
Jobandcareeropportunities
Lowerlivingcosts
Greenareas
Nearbypublictransportation
Directandspeedyroads
Nearbyservicesandfacilities
Qualityservicesandfacilities
Lowerhousingprices
Lessimmigrants
Loweremissions

Figure 8. Rank of the options and the expectations expressed by the users SimTorino

Central to the evaluation process is the concept that planning-policy pathways to the future can be achieved by a diverse
range of options, and these pathways should be not just feasible, but socially participated too. Among other issues,
SimTorino facilitates the social exploration of the question What are the ways in which we could act in order to reach a
particular planning issue or goal?
SimTorino has aimed to set up a partnership between citizens and government, based on active contribution to policy as
local knowledge: the very mundane, but still expert, understanding of and practical reasoning about local conditions
derived from lived experience (Yanow, 2003). The Citizen Folksonomy embodies the citizens proposals in policy
options: each individual contribution participates to the policymaking process.
An aim of SimTorino is to give the citizens the effective opportunity to direct propose options to government. Whereas in
decision-making process organised groups gain their role in terms of their capability to mobilise resources to present and
support a position: They are there to represent a particular interest (neighbourhood, ethic group, religion, age-group,
etc.) rather than to contribute their local knowledge (Barnes, 2007), their focused activism has demonstrated significant
constrains in terms of canvassing a range of suitable policy options. SimTorino has empowered the direct involvement of
citizens in developing and contributing policy options, the local knowledge, which has potential of innovation for the
interaction of citizens with the government, because citizens as citizens are often better placed to reconcile a range of
perspectives on a given issue (ibid).
Collectively, the individual contributions shape the policy dialogue: the means is mapping the knowledge.
5.

Map the knowledge

According to OECD (2001) the responsibility for the final decision or policy formulation rests with government. The aim
of mapping the knowledge is not just to elicit contextual information, but also to bring it to policymakers in a form that
58

MIC _ My Ideal City

serves the making of stakeholders-centred plans, projects and policies. In SimTorino the knowledge is goal-oriented and
embodies personal sights. SimTorino has implemented and experimented a knowledge-mapping methodology to share
the local knowledge, expressed in a tacit way from the citizens and stakeholders, mapped to the decision-makers
graphically.
The graphic representation is based on hyperedges maps (Mika, 2007), which highlight the commitments of the
stakeholders in terms of goals and issues, and their object, represented in the Folksonomy with ternary associations
between the user (stakeholder), the concept and the object.

DoraRiver

NoDrugs
Teenagers NoAlcohol Borgaro Bigger
Trouble
Inefficiency

Toomuch

Crime

Better
Foresight
Buses
Recycle
Place
GreenBelt
Policies
Outskirts
Priority
GovernmentSupport
Neighbourhoods
Kids
FinancialSupport
Incentives
Park Encourage
Traffic
Safe
Waiting
Trains Centre
Schools
Problem
Laws
Recreation
Community
Falchera
Change
Subway
More
Green
EnterTheCity
Refurbish MegaProjects
Blue Require
North-South
ShoppingMalls
Settimo Clean ConsultPrograms CultureArt Stura
Axe
Conservation
Best
DoNotAllTaxpayers
BikePath
LagunaVerde
People
Limit
QualityOfLife
Cost
Tourist
Racetrack
Analysis
Stop
Solutions
WebSite Vision Turin
Attractions
AmusingGame DoNotSacrifice Taxes
IdealisticVisions
NotJust
KeepAnEye
Taxpayers WishList
IndustrialEnergy
Services
CityCentre
DoNoRaise
Amenities
After
Reduce Renewed
Municipality
Development
ImpulsiveReactions
Olympics
LegislateMediation
Roads Maintenance
Commercial
Importation
Principles
Ideas
PastFocus
Projects
NewAreas
Support
StrongerAttitude
Residential
SpecificChoices
Mix
Issues
InvolvedBestPractices
Environment
Lack
Input
Waste
Domypart
Sidewalks
Remember
Pathway
Decisions
Plans
Focus WaterConservation
Children

Protect

Now

SmartDevelopment

LongTerm

Realistic

CostEffective

OuterAreas

Aliens

NewIndustrial
Few

Nomore

LimitedLifespan
Gipsies

Lungostura

Junkies

PermanentJobs

Figure 9. Hyperedges map of concepts expressed by the users SimTorino before filtering.

SimTorino advances interactive view and zoom to hyperedges maps to highlight three association networks,
respectively:

the occurrence of the goals and issues, by offering search and navigation based on decision-makers broader or
narrower definition of the issues,

the explicit mapping of the social context, associated to issues, emerging as relationships among the stakeholders,
structuring them in communities pursuing similar interests in terms of explicit goal and place,

the issues are linked to the stakeholders representing the topology of the relationships. The topological
representation illustrates the degree of stakeholders engagement and the extent of their contributions to the plan or
project. A further analysis of the typology is expected to provide insights on social engagement in and contribution to
the decision-making process.

Interactive knowledge mapping to the decision-makers should be understood as an atlas, indicating ways,
expectations, and options on the plans and projects, not as a mere normative, prescriptive commitment to any fixed
solution. Mapping the knowledge is a rather different perspective on the objectives and methodologies of participatory
59

MIC _ My Ideal City

modes of governance: it stresses not the efficacy of exposing citizens to expert knowledge; instead it exposes experts to
what has been referred to as lay or personal knowledge.
Concluding Remarks
SimTorino, listening to citizens preferences and expectations, has provided to a broad public the opportunity to
contribute to the four action lines, to assess what are preferred options in personal foresights, and has provided
feedback through evaluation and measurement. It is likely to all help ensure that the public to be more supportive of the
development and implementation of the considered policies, and to make projects and plans more effective and
legitimate, and to build more trust in the policy and in the government. SimTorino provides evidence that when people
are actively involved, they can help to generate a heightened sense of public value.
Efficacy
Increasing on-line engagement of citizens raises the question of the efficacy of the citizens participation in policy
process and extensively of citizens interaction with the government. The question of effectiveness is multi-sided in that it
is possible to assess the achievements of SimTorino (analogously to any on-line participation system) in terms of the
degree to which procedural planning or policy goals will be achieved (such as engaging a broad cross-section of the
public in the process) and the degree to which projects or practices will be influenced and motivated by the engagement
of citizens through ICT tools.
In the end, a question that SimTorino case study was dealing with is: how the technology brought innovation in the
process, yielding development and implementation of project, plans or policies have achieved their goals.
Trust
We consider that the sixteen thousand users SimTorino, generating about 2.5 personal foresights each, have developed
some understanding of the actions for the North-East quadrant, and could have strengthened the trust in participation in
decision-making. Russell Hardin in The Public Trust (2000) considers In conceptual work on the subject, it is commonly
assumed that trust has two quite distinct dimensions: competence to perform what one is trusted to do and motivation to
perform. In SimTorino competence has been both the one of the government and of the public: they are just flip-sides of
the same coin. The first was top-down to represent the different folds of the decision-making process. The second was
bottom-up, populated by citizens with concepts, contributions, and options on the action lines. What have been
understood as local knowledge contributes both to motivate the citizens in participating and to shape their perspective
role on issues, for example from the view of the taxpayers, from the users of government services, and from the
members of a community.
This is especially true for the citizens that have a low ability to envision a future, any future, different from what they
already know in their daily experience, primarily for the weakest social voices, often due to material or cultural poverty,
which leaves few resources for and narrows the horizon of the expectations and the ambitions. In contrast, the action
lines have be designed and communicated in ways and in forms to introduce visible and recognisable elements of
innovation to the foresights.

60

MIC _ My Ideal City

Indeed, to the core of public motivation is the perception that citizens efforts and contributions are producing
measurable feedback in the decision process and do not occur only when it is convenient and instrumental to a larger
political agenda.
Through citizens engagement processes, SimTorino has demonstrated the capacity to build relationships of trust with
the government and with the public. The experimented five-tiers of active participation (Define the domain of the public
participation, Empowering stakeholders knowledge, Generate personal foresight, Evaluate foresight, and Map the
knowledge) for individuals or groups with different and even conflicting interest has focused their attention on the
outcomes of the four action lines outlined. Parties who have disagreed have come to understand why the others hold a
different position and to circumscribe the shapes of the reciprocal interests and of the juxtaposed issues, contributing to
build a (well-)defined ground for a dialogue.
Quality
A term of the active dialogue has been the quality of the life and of the environment. These are elusive concepts that,
possibly for this reason, are usually kept apart from urban governance processes. SimTorino has invested a big deal of
effort on morphological and analytical representations, integrated within the five-tiers of the active participatory model.
The system and its experimentation have aimed to explore the morphological aspects of the spatial construction of
scenarios, and to place them at the beginning of the process, contextually to policy and government processes. We
esteem this an added value of the case study, both for the methodology and for the impact on the decision-making
process. Methodologically, for the shift from images of the city, intended as intentional construction of individual or group
visible intentionalities, towards foresights as knowledge: knowledge relating to specific histories of cities progressively
accumulates, appears ever more as a great rhetorical figure - something on the edge, an unattainable point of escape.
(Secchi, 2002)
The Turin case has placed morphology at the centre of urban transformation process: the foresights can become shared
objectives and subjects of discussion also because they are forms, in other words figurations of constructed landscapes
(Figure 6). In most cases the morphology is almost eluded or made aseptic by the infinite distance set apart by maps,
while SimTorino has assigned a primary role to the three- and four-dimensional foresights of the metropolitan city: no
longer representation, coming after political, technical and economic decisions, oriented by the demands imposed by the
market, by initiatives, by communication, which threaten to reduce the design into a sequence of objects, eliminating the
complexities of the relationships with the local or urban environment.
Acknowledgements
SimTorino is the outcome of a multi-disciplinary research project set up by the High Quality Laboratory Integrated
Territorial Project of the Turin Polytechnic. The team who contributed to the carrying out of the research has consisted
of:

implementation of the model: Francesco Guerra and Alfonso Montuori, Turin Polytechnic;

creation of the database: Andrea Ballocca; the Province of Turin and CSI Piemonte, Francesco Guerra, Turin
Polytechnic;

transport model: Francesco De Florio, Turin Polytechnic, Corrado Bason, Agency for Metropolitan Mobility;
61

MIC _ My Ideal City

construction of scenarios: Liliana Bazzanella, Franco Corsico, Giuseppe Roccasalva, Turin Polytechnic;

virtual reality: Elena Masala, Stefano Pensa, Turin Polytechnic;

hyperedges maps: Alfonso Montuori, Turin Polytechnic;

the City of Turin, the Province of Turin, the ISI foundation for Scientific Exchange and the Agency for Metropolitan
Mobility also contributed to the research in various ways.

References
BAGNASCO, A. Torino. Un profilo sociologico. Torino: Einaudi, 1986.
BARDACH, E. Practical Guide for Policy Analysis: The Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving. Washington,
D.C.: CQ Press, 2009.
BARDACH, E. The Eight-Step Path of Policy Analysis: A Handbookfor Practice. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Academic
Press, 1996.
BARNES, M. SKELCHER, C. Local Knowledge and Local Representation: Discourses and Designs in Participatory
Governance, in Conference of CINEFOGO Network of Excellence on Civil Society and New Forms of Governance in
Europe. Bristol: University of the West of England, 2007.
CANEPARO L., COLLO, M. DI GIANNANTONIO, D. LOMBARDO, V. MONTUORI. A. PENSA, S. Generating Urban
Forms from Ontologies, in Teller, J. Tweed, C.E. Rabino, G. (eds) Conceptual Models for Urban Practitioners. Bologna:
Societ Editrice Esculapio, 171-184, 2008.
COUCLELIS, H. Where has the future gone? Rethinking the role of integrated land-use models in spatial planning, in
Environment and Planning A, 37(8), 1353-1371, 2005.
DUNN, W.N. Public Policy Analysis: An Introduction. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1994.
FROUKJE SLEESWIJK, V. JAN STAPPERS, P. VAN DER LUGT, R. SANDERS, E.B-N. Contextmapping: experiences
from practice. In CoDesign: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts. 1(2):119-149, 2005.
HARDING A., MARVIN S. SPRIGINGS N. Releasing the National Economic Potential of Provincial City-Regions: The
Rationale for an Implications of a Northern Way Growth Strategy: Report for the ODPM. Salford: SURF, 2004.
INSELBERG, A. The plane with parallel coordinates, in The Visual Computer, 1(4):6991, 1985.
JOUVE, B. From government to urban governance in Western Europe: a critical analysis, in Public Administration and
Development, 25, 285294, 2005.
KUNZ, W. HORST, R. Issues as Elements of Information Systems. Heidelberg: Studiengruppe fr Systemforschung,
Working paper No. 131, 1970.
KWEIT, M.G. The Politics of Policy Analysis: The Role of Citizen Participation in Analytic Decision Making, in DeSario
J. Langton, S. (eds) Citizen Participation in Public Decision Making. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987.
MAYNTZ, R. Conceptual Models of Organizational Decision Making and their Application to the Policy Process. In
Hofstede G. Sami Kassem M. (eds.). European Contributions to Organization Theory. Assen: Van Gorcum, 2006.
MCRAE, D. WHITTINGTON, D. Expert Advice for Policy Choice: Analysis and Discourse. Washington, DC: Georgetown
University Press, 1997.
MIKA, P. Ontologies are us: A unified model of social networks and semantics, in Journal of Web Semantics, 5(1), 515, 2007.
OECD. Engaging Citizens in Policy-making: Information, Consultation and Public Participation. PUMA Public
Management Policy Brief No. 10, 2001.
OGILVY, J. SCHWARTZ, P. Plotting Your Scenarios. in Fahey, Liam. Randall, Robert M. (eds) Learning from the
Future: Competitive Foresight Scenarios. New York: Wiley, 1998.
PARKINSON, J. Deliberating in the Real World. Problems of Legitimacy in Deliberative Democracy. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2006.
62

MIC _ My Ideal City

PATTON, C, SAWICKI, D. CLARK, J. Basic Methods of Policy Analysis and Planning. Forthcoming.
PINSON, G. LE GALS, P. State restructuring and decentralization dynamics in France: politics is the driving force,
Cahier du pole Ville no. 07/05. Paris: Centre dEtudes Europennes de Sciences-Po, 2005.
PUMAIN, D. Opening Plenary : Communicating about Theoretical Geography, in Cybergeo: European Journal of
Geography, 2006.
REICH, R.B. The Power of Public Ideas. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company, 1988.
SANDERSON, W.C. Simulation Models of Demographic, Economic, and Environmental Interactions, in Lutz, 10, 33
71, 1994.
SECCHI B. Diario di un urbanista, in Planum, 2002.
TOBLER, W.R. A computer movie simulating urban growth in the Detroit region, in Economic Geography, 46 (2), 234
240, 1970.
VIANO, M. Torino. Tredici anni di attuazione del PRG, in Atti e Rassegna Tecnica della Societ degli Ingegneri e degli
Architetti in Torino, LXII-1-2, 2008.
VIGAS, F. B. WATTENBERG, M. HAM, F.V. KRISS, J. MCKEON, M. Many Eyes: a Site for Visualization at Internet
Scale, in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 13(6), 1121-1128, 2007.
WADDELL, P. EVCKOV, H. SOCHA, D. MILLER, E. NAGEL, K. Opus: An Open Platform for Urban Simulation, in
Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management Conference, London, 2005.
WADDELL, P. ULFARSSON, G.F. Introduction to Urban Simulation: Design and Development of Operational Models,
in Button, S. Hensher, K. (eds) Handbook in Transport, Volume 5: Transport Geography and Spatial Systems. Oxford:
Pergamon Press, 2004.
WEGMAN, E. Hyperdimensional data analysis using parallel coordinates, in Journal of the American Statistical
Association, 411(85):664, 1990.
YANKELOVICH, D. Coming to Public Judgment. New York: University of Syracuse Press, 1991.
YANOW, D. Accessing local knowledge, in Hajer M.A. Wagenaar, H. (eds) Deliberative Policy Analysis. Understanding
Governance in the Network Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

63

MIC _ My Ideal City

Graffiti as a critical encounter of the notions purity and order: Towards a

contingent city
Konstantinos Avramidisa, PhD Candidate at National Technical University of Athens - School of
Architecture
Konstantina Drakopouloua, PhD Candidate at University of Athens - Department of Archaeology and
History of Art

1. Introduction
Any notion of ideal city should be dealing with reality. So, collective actions that pose a critical understanding of present
city should be under consideration, otherwise ambushes the danger for meaningless speculations. Past participatory
approaches in architecture (e.g. community architecture, architecture of commitment, advocacy planning) have been
forgotten. The legacy and influence of these approaches is highly unnoticed (e.g. DIY etc.). Centralized or
institutionalized participatory processes have provenly failed. However, a spontaneous participation in the production of
space (Lefebvre, 1991) has emerged, namely graffiti. A new type of intervention in the city, as Jean Baudrillard
notes,no longer as a site of economical and political power, but as a space-time of terrorist power of the media, signs
and the dominant culture (Baudrillard 1993:76). In that point of view, graffiti, by its marginal position, could address this
question.
The paper makes the argument that spatial order is still seen as a direct equivalent of social order and vice versa.
Architecture, as the dominant and institutionalized discipline of spatial production, is still perceived as an act of imposing
order. Moreover, the vast majority of citizens share the same ideas (or ideals). This conviction over spatial and social
order equation drives to a war in order to exterminate ambiguity and contingency. However, this study is based on Henri
Lefebvres assumption that the city is the projection of society on the ground (Lefebvre, 1996:109). Considering that,
city is the place where both dominant notions of society as well as their contestations are expressed. Graffiti
substantiates such a contestation, considering space. Questioning the notion of the one and only authority (e.g.
institutionalization of spatial production, protection of the authoritative power of spatial disciplines-such as architecture)
concerning the way urban space is produced and consumed (not experienced or lived), urban adolescence, using spaypaint, plunge on public. Examining graffiti oppositions, focusing on the notions of purity and order, we can move
forward to unveil the well-established, yet hidden, perception of space which is, oddly enough, still based on modernism.
Putting an emphasis on the importance of encounters can actively transform the ways we understand space as socially
crafted.
a

Assignments: Konstantinos Avramidis: par. 1, 2, 3,4; Konstantina Drakopoulou: par. 1, 2, 3, 4.

64

MIC _ My Ideal City

2. On Dirt - Purity and Modernism

Graffiti is constantly described as dirt or pollution. As Mary Douglas suggests, dirt is socially constructed and is used
to describe something that is, or is thought to be, in the wrong place (Douglas, 2002:144). Graffiti is therefore described
as dirty because it exists in unsanctioned places and should be removed before it contaminates the surrounding
environment of the, as mentioned by Baudrillard, white city (Baudrillard, 1993:83). This cleanliness adds another
dimension: it denotes purity, the removal of waste, whiteness. Mark Wigley rightfully wonders, Why white? (Wigley
1995:xiv). Why do we, or we want to, surround ourselves with white walls? The white wall is taken for granted, but what if
we recall the words of Jeremy Till: the whiter the wall, the quicker it succumbs to dirt (Till, 2009:34). White is adopted
literally from the avant-garde of the modern movement while is translated as purity or cleanliness from the rest. A huge
variety of examples that extol whiteness and purity can be found up to this day, but as Till cites, Le Corbusier and the
others are not inventors of modernism, but an inevitable consequence of modernity [] each one is a symptom not a
cause (Till, 2009:33). It is modernity that established to the collective conscience the fear of ambivalence; modern
movement is just an expression of this fear. This constant fear formed the framework in which norms, taboos and
stereotypes flourish.
If you describe an action as dirty, in our case graffiti, you disapprove of it and you consider it unfair, immoral, or
dishonest. Frequently, dirty, by human creativity, architecture becomes synonym of dirty morals but, as Till states, this is
a shabby and simplistic allegation, since it associates architecture deterministically with society, as if the cleansing of
one will lead to the cleansing of the other (Till, 2009:177). This conflation of dirt with dirty moral continues to this day.
However, this univocal aesthetics-ethics equation impoverishes the wider context simply because it dresses some
professions, like architecture, and some actions, like cleaning, with an ethical mantle just by shaping codes of conduct.
At the same time, every mode of conduct outside the box is assumed as immoral or assault against dominant morality.
For example, when architects appeal the honesty in structure and detail is like fulfilling a moral purpose; respectively
when a neighborhood eliminates dirt is like serving an ethical duty, while when graffiti writers inscribe their names and
needs on the city walls is like conducting an immoral war just by imposing another spontaneous aesthetics.
In his essay Ornament and Crime, modern architect Adolf Loos introduced a sense of the "immorality" of ornament,
describing it as degenerate, its suppression as necessary for regulating modern society. In one of his key examples,
namely the tattooing of the Papuan, considered the Papuan not to have evolved to the moral and civilized
circumstances of modern man, who, should he tattoo himself, would either be considered a criminal or a degenerate
(Loos, 1908). We should not overlook Loos's "passion for smooth and precious surfaces", which underlines once again
the dominant ethos of modern era. As we see, each stigma of personalization is perceived as mere primitivism; every dirt
in modern times should be eliminated. By tattooing walls, graffiti writers, Baudrillard cites, free them from architecture
and turn them once again into living, social matter, into the moving body of the city before it has been branded with
functions and institutions (Baudrillard, 1993:82). Loos states that the modern man who has tattoos himself is a criminal
or degenerate (Loos, 1908). However, graffiti writer Zedz would answer I consider graffiti to be the tattoos on the skin
of the city (Schlee, 2005:33), but Loos would insist that a tattooed body do not increase the aesthetic value, but reduce
it (Loos, 1908). The important word here is value, since it authorizes the modern system of valuation as the dominant,
with profound ethical consequences.
65

MIC _ My Ideal City

Graffiti is also frequently cited as ugly. This means that something else is assumed as beautiful and the latter is
considered to have redemptive etchical purpose. Still, the anxiety over graffiti comes directly from its placement rather
than its aesthetics. Graffiti is considered dirt because is situated in the wrong place, the wrong time and consequently is
something ranked at the bottom of a hierarchical scale of values 1 (Douglas, 1966). According to Susan Stewart graffiti
writers have put their subjectivity in the wrong place and this utterance out of place has often been considered by the
public and law to be obscene. All display is a form of exposure and just as the spaces of reproduction in society are
maintained through the regulation, by means of taboo and legitimation, of places and tomes for sexuality, so, in this
case, do writing and figuration in the wrong place and time fall into the category of obscenity (Stewart, 1987:169).
The notions order and purity are both fundamental in a modernists vocabulary. Kristin Ross, in her book Fast CarsClean Bodies 2, begins to historicize the relation between cleanliness and capitalist modernization in postwar France
(Ross, 1996). She often recalls Roland Barthes remarks concerning the new French vocabulary to denote the desired of
a shine automobile. The desire of the cars shine, according to Barthes, is the desire to remake the virginity of the
object over and over again, to give it the immobility of a material on which time has no effect (Barthes, 1963:45).
Barthes links here the will to cleanliness with a desire to immobilize time to understand the object outside history,
untouched by the time. Still, graffiti writers do not conceive of their role as one within a larger narrative; rather they place
their pieces within the interruptions and interstices of social life, marking off a space for a time and inscribing it within an
individuality both unique and ephemeral. By doing so, graffiti resembles the cut frame of cinema refusing permanence.
A name that gets around, that goes places, must be seen against a background of the controlled, rationally created
environment3, of the fixed society it traverses and that societys continually deferred promise of personal mobility.
(Srewart, 1987:169). More specifically, graffiti can be seen as a permanent soiling of the environment simply in its
constant replicability, its emphasis upon repetition and replacement. Graffiti is widely considered to be a defacement, a
threat not only to the surface upon which is applied, but rather a threat to the whole system of meanings by which such
surfaces acquire value, integrity and significance. Thus the former New York mayor Lindsay said that he and his staff
had never really wondered whether graffiti was anything but defacement (Mailer, 1974). And the head of the policegang control-unit in Los Angeles declares that graffiti decreases property value and signed buildings convey the
impression that the city government has lost control, that the neighborhood is sliding toward anarchy (Clamping Down
on the Gangs in the Graffiti Fight, The Philadelphia Inquirer, November 21, 1982, p. 2-A.). The public square-the public
space of the city- is in this case read like a newspapers crime-reporting section. The important item that was being
read in the public square is according to the sociologist Nathan Glazer the citys defeat in the war on graffiti4 (Glazer,
1979). The writing on the walls gave the resident/reader the uneasy feeling that the city was out of control. Once again
we see that this uneasy feeling concerning graffiti and dirt is constructed, based on modernistic recipes. In this
1 Concerning value see also:
HERRNSTEIN-SMITH B. , Contingencies of Value, in Critical Inquiry vol.10, n.13, 1983, pp. 1-35
2 Kristin Ross, in her book Fast Cars, Clean Bodies, attempts to show how the discourse of hygiene provides the link between those neoracisms
and the ideology of capitalist modernization. She argues that the logic of racial exclusion dominating French society today is itself the outcome of
the accelerated capital modernization the French state undertook after the war.
3 Rationally created environment, meaning an ordered and clean environment in a modernistic context, is seen as rational and logical because it
has been created out of the rules of reason and logic.
4 Concerning graffiti wars see also:
AUSTIN J., Taking the Train: How graffiti became an urban crisis in New York city, Columbia University Press, New York, 2001.
CAVAN S., The Great Graffiti War of the Late 20th Century, in Pasific Sociological Assosiation, 1995 <http://www.hiphopnetwork.com/articles/graffitiarticles/greatgraffitiwars.asp>, Last visit 23/04/2011

66

MIC _ My Ideal City

formulation, vandalism is represented as a disruption (an unauthorized writing) in the text of the citys officially
sanctioned order. This reading has a profound effect on the residents/ readers, making them into passive, retreating
victims. Furthermore, it creates the impression that the city administration and the powers are helpless and uncaring
about the fear this uncontrollable situation produces. This uncontrollable or threatening situation is, in other words,
the direct result of a city where contingency is back, since space and time are once again contested. Besides,
retreatment and fear are reflex actions towards the unknown.

3. On Disorder - Order and Contingency

Dirt is also linked to disorder. Graffiti, for those outside the subculture, is often considered to be lawless and chaotic;
an action that threats order and signals indifference. As for those who are not intimate with its complex codes and
hidden communications, it is appreciated simply as dirt and disorder. Furthermore, as Rafael Schacter notes, the
indecipherability of visual representation, its seemingly disordered, disorganised arrangement, seems to have an actual
physical affect people, an ability to make them feel genuinely uncomfortable, to give the impression of being under
personal attack by the graffiti (Schacter, 2008:45, italics added). Considering that, it is downright that its indecipherable
representation, or its disordered aesthetic, is seen to give rise to the threat of the undesired or unexplained content,
and this in turn gives rise to fear of loosing order. Graffiti is frequently condemned for not only providing an unpleasant,
ugly and disordered aesthetic, but also for the way it violently confronted the viewer in a bodily manner, since it
seems to put fear on your doorstep (Schacter, 2008:43). This means that graffiti, through its ambivalent nature, has the
capacity to touch its recipient and to create even a bodily response. That illustrates the reason why graffiti is so often
considered to be violent or even identified with vandalism.
The assertion that the fear of shared public space experienced by the residents of big cities is directly related to the
appearance of spray-painted names on the city walls and on the subways was subsequently reinforced in the academic
work of several criminology scholars who formulated the broken window theory 5. This theory also approaches the
public square as a text, like a newspaper, implying that civic order is a fragile text, one that contains a powerful
preferred reading: tolerations of visible disruptions in the normative aesthetic order of urban space could lead to a
general collapse into lawlessness (Hall, 1980). But as the Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman cites, order, the typically
modern practice [], is the effort to exterminate ambivalence (Bauman, 1991:4). Order is the situation that exists when
everything is in the correct place or expected place, or happens at the correct or expected time. The important word here
is expected. By whom, someone would ask. This means that someone is assumed as authorized to produce and control
space, to put everything in the correct palce, and someone else is expelled from this process; that someone has the
right to form reality and another does not.
The concept of order is not new, neither is the notion of contingency, since awareness of the worlds contingency and
the idea of order as the goal and the outcome of the practice of ordering were born together, as twins; perhaps even
The Broken Window theory was introduced in the article of the criminologists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, The Police and
Neighborhood Safety, in Atlantic Monthly, n. 249, 1982, pp.29-38. This theory states that unapprised disorder is a sign that no one cares and
actually invites both further disorder and more serious crime. It received a great deal of attention and was very widely cited.At the same time it has
also been the subject of a large body of criticism.The broken window thesis has been a cornerstone of Rudolph Giulianis (the NYC Mayor elected
in 1993 and 1997) governing and crime fighting strategies, including cracking down on graffiti.
See also: MURRAY J., MURRAY K., Broken Windows Graffiti NYC, Gingko Press, Berkeley, 2009.

67

MIC _ My Ideal City

Siamese twins (Bauman, 1992:xii). From Vitruvious to Le Corbusier the notion of order is always present. It is a notion
that haunts humanity because it is regarded as the only antidote against the plague called unknown. Order, as well as
purity, is at its apogee in the era of modernity. Bauman describes the modern state, in a thriving metaphor, as a
gardening state (Bauman, 1991:30), bringing the unpredictable and the fearful (nature) under the rule of order and
control (garden). The gardener gets rid of weeds as part of the controlling of nature, but as Till strikingly notes, weeds
always come back (Till, 2009:34). Weeds here symbolize contingency and if we extend the metaphor in spatial terms
means to understand each social, unsanctioned, practice as a natural action. As Jeremy Till notes, there are two key
aspects of Baumans analysis of modernity and its ordering tendencies; on the one hand he argues that the will to order
arose out of a fear of disorder (Bauman, 1992:xi), but this is an illusion because, as he explains the second aspect, to
achieve order one has to eliminate the other of order, but the other of order can never be fully erased6 (Till, 2009:34). In
that point of view, by removing graffiti only a resemblance of order is created while inherent disorder still smolders. By
identifying contingency as something of a threat to society, as unequivocal menace to society, means to remove from
any possible dialogue the opposite opinion. Any argument supporting its existence is simply implied to be acquiescing to
the inherent threat to natural order (Schacter, 2008:46). Here, as natural order is considered the dominant notion of
order, meaning the modernistic one.
The modern man is a cosmic puritan, who is afraid of his own power to explore anything that he cannot control in
advance (Sennett, 1992:106). The key word here is in advance. The unpredictable or the unknown generates fear to
the modern man. So, to establish order we should eliminating contingency. Bauman underlines the argument when he
insightfully writes that the struggle for order [] is a fight of determination against ambiguity, of semantic precision
against ambivalence, of transparency against obscurity, clarity against fuzziness. The other of order is not another order
[] is the uncertainty, that source and archetype of all fear (Bauman, 1991:7). So, graffiti is fearful simply because it
lessens order. By doing so, increases uncertainty and in turn fear. As we shall see with any project of the modern age,
the more one attempts to eliminate the other of order, the more it comes back to haunt one. The kind of society that,
retrospectively, came to be called modern, Bauman writes, emerged out of the discovery that human order is
vulnerable, contingent and devoid of reliable foundations. That discovery was shocking. [] it prompted an incessant
drive to eliminate the haphazard and annihilate the spontaneous (Bauman, 1992:xi). Spontaneity is one of the keycharacteristics of graffiti. Graffiti writers themselves care little for order, and in the words of Baudrillard a thousand of
youths armed with spray-paint are enough to scramble the signals of urbania and dismantle order (Baudrillard,
1993:80).
In other words, contingency liberates space as well as time. So, to speak about contingency means to consider space
and time both as the result and the precondition of social action. Space, as Doreen Massey suggests, is never finished;
never closed [] always under construction (Massey 2005:9). Space happens does not univocally exist. So, graffiti
writers as they write the city they invent space. These performed spaces as they happen acquire totally different and
distinctive meaning. This kind of logic seems actually postmodern in its attention to the surface appearance of social
order. It implies that the cause of collective social order is a matter of appearance, a matter of aesthetics located in the
surrounding spectacle of the urban environment. It implies that what undermines the social order of a community is not
Here the notion of entropy seems quite relevant. On entropy see also ARNHEIM R., Entropy and Art: An Essay on Disorder and Order, University
of California Press, Los Angeles, 1971.

68

MIC _ My Ideal City

the lack of jobs, the uneven distribution of scarce resources, social inequalities or some flaw in the social fabric, but the
clean, proper appearance of an area. In this framework, government officials must reinforce the preferred aesthetics in
terms of what is considered normal and acceptable. After all, postmodernity can be seen as an attempt to restore the
world that modernity, unintentionally or not, had taken away, as a re-enchantment of artifice that has been dismantled;
the modern conceit of meaningthe world that modernity tried hard to dis-enchant [] the dis-enchantment of the world
was the ideology of its subordination; simultaneously a declaration of intent to make the world docile to those who would
have won the right to will, and a legitimization of practices guided solely by that will as the uncontested standard of
propriety (Bauman, 1992:x).

4. Learning from Graffiti: Towards the contingent city

Architecture has systematically avoided engagement with the uncertainties of the world through a retreat into an
autonomous realm. Architects developed a defense system against the overwhelming forces of modernity through
maintaining barriers behind which an ordered and moral world can be erected. Although, as we already saw in Baumans
writings, this defense is futile since only a semblance of order is created. The same has been the case for the large
majority of citizens worldwide. Furthermore, graffiti is highly misapprehended simply because it is examined through the
dominant, non-critical (since takes order and purity for granted), framework. Participating in such activities, like graffiti, or
even thinking of their occurrence, is not a matter of expressing an opinion or an opposition; it is a matter of helping to
produce both the spaces for public use and a new culture of public use. A bunch of kids, in our case graffiti writers,
realized that. In the end of the day, graffiti turns out to be an energizer of social relationships because it connects
bodies known and unknown through the proliferation of images (Hasley and Young, 2006:278). Besides, it forges
connections between writers and those thinking about its occurrence. The illegality of the medium may give the work a
performative aspect which makes spectatorship an interactive occurrence. Viewers become potential agents and much
more aware of their, as Lefebvre puts it, right to the city (Lefebvre, 1996:63).
Graffiti contests aesthetics and politics of authority by collating its own. By doing so, space happens. Thus, space can
be conceived as a process rather than an object. Bearing that in mind, process could never exterminate contingency
since it is wide open to possibilities. Our contemporary understanding of the notions order and purity, as
superannuated as it can be, should be re-examined. Besides, disorder, as Richard Sennett puts it, should be the key
element to approach the notion of community (Sennett, 1992). The ideal city should be polyphonic and communal,
where individual desires and collective actions may flourish. Mess is the law (Till, 2009:xii) and graffiti is a good
example to discover that this is an opportunity and not a threat. The aim of this paper is to show how individual desires,
written onto the urban fabric, could fire collective actions that critically encounter the dominant, and well-rooted,
modernistic perception of space. Graffiti, due to its ambivalent nature, could be a starting point to address the question
of a sincere participation. Graffiti is not an answer to our established cultural understanding of the notions order and
purity. Graffiti is just another question.

69

MIC _ My Ideal City

References
BARTHES R., La Voiture, projection de lgo, in Ralits, n. 213, 1963, p. 45.
BAUDRILLARD J., Symbolic Exchange and Death (trans. Grant I.H.), Sage Publications, London, 1993 (1976).
BAUMAN Z., Intimation and Postmodernity, Routledge, London, 1992.
BAUMAN Z., Modernity and Ambivalence, Polity Press, Camnbridge, 1991.
DOUGLAS M., Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concept of Pollution and Taboo, Routledge, London, 2002 (1966).
GLAZER N., On Subway Graffiti in New York, in The Public Interest, n. 54, Winter 1979, pp. 3-11.
GRIDER S.A., Con Safos: Mexican-Americans, Names and Graffiti, in BRUNVAND J.H. (ed.), Readings in American
Folklore, Norton, New York, 1979, pp.138-151.
HALL S., Encoding/Decoding, in HALL S. et al., (eds.), Culture, Media, Language, Hutchinson, London, 1980, pp. 128138.
HALSEY M., YOUNG A., Our desires are ungovernable: Writing graffiti in urban space, in Theoretical Criminology,
n.10, 2006, pp. 275-306.
LEVEBVRE H., The Production of Space (trans. Nicholson-Smith D.), Blackwell, Oxford, 1991.
LEVEBVRE H., Writings on Cities (trans.& eds. Kofman E., Lebas E.), Blackwell, Oxford, 1996.
MAILER N., The Faith of Graffiti, Praeger, New York, 1974, n.p.
MASSEY D., For Space, Sage Publications, London, 2005.
ROSS K., Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture, MIT Press, Cambridge MA,
1996.
ROSS K., Starting Afresh: Hygiene and Modernization in Postwar France, October, vol. 67, Winter 1994, pp. 22-57.
SCHACTER R., An Ethnography of Iconoclash: An Investigation into the Production, Consumption and Destruction of
Street-art in London, in Journal of Material Culture, n.13, 2008, pp. 35-61.
SENNETT R., The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life, Norton, New York, 1992 (1970).
SCHLEE S., Fadings: Graffiti to Design, Illustration and More, Ginko Press, Los Angeles, 2005.
STEWART S., Ceci Tuera Cela: Graffiti as Crime and Art, in FEKETE J. (ed.), Life after Postmodernism: Essays on
Value and Culture, St. Martins Press, New York, 1987, pp. 161-180.
TILL J., Architecture Depends, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2009.
WIGLEY M., White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1995.

70

MIC _ My Ideal City

Ave Maria. Ideal as Devotion, Participation as Exclusion

Alberto Bertagna, IUAV University of Venice

Then they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for
ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.1
The history of the town of Ave Maria, Collier County, Florida, is closely intertwined with the life of its founder, Thomas
Stephen Monaghan, who was known, between 1960 and 1998, in association with the Dominos Pizza chain (sold for $1
billion currently Monaghan holds only 7% of the company), a brand that in 2010, 50 years after its foundation, controls
over 9,000 stores across the world. It appears that before 1960 Monaghan pursued two different callings: he initially
entered the seminary to become a priest and later on enrolled in the architecture program of the University of Michigan.
These two callings remained latent during his entrepreneurial life, even though they did find some outlet, and he finally
responded to them only after selling the business he had been engaged in for nearly 40 years. During his Domino's
Pizza years, Monaghan's second calling soon became a passion for Frank Lloyd Wright: the Dominos Pizza
headquarters in Ann Arbor Township, Michigan, were built after the Prairie School architecture; and so was a private
resort in Drummond Island, Michigan, and subsequently his own house. Moreover, he is still one of the greatest
collectors of design objects by Wright. At the same time, he consecrated to his first calling a significant philanthropic
commitment, as well as building a mission in Honduras, a cathedral in Nicaragua and, in 1983, establishing the Ave
Maria Foundation. Directly and entirely controlled by Monaghan, this private foundation was established to promote the
ideals of the Catholic Church in American society through education, the media, and political activism. Along the same
lines, he later founded Ave Maria Radio, Ave Maria List (a pro-life advocacy group) and the Spiritus Sanctus Academies
(70 primary schools). In 1998, Monaghan definitively left the lead of Dominos Pizza and totally committed himself to his
dual calling. In 2000, he opened the Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor and the Ave Maria College in Ypsilanti, both
in Michigan. In the meantime, the idea of a city entirely devoted to Catholic precepts and gravitating around a university
started to take shape.
Originally intended to use some land of his own in Ann Arbor, Monaghan was faced with the impossibility to change its
use, and started to seek an alternative location. Collier County offered him a large non-built up area 30 miles from the
city of Naples, Florida. In 2002, Barron Collier Companies, Pulte Homes Inc., and the Ave Maria Foundation formalized
an agreement for the purchase of over 5,000 acres. In 2003, the Collier County Rural Lands Stewardship Area Overlay
was undersigned with the County's administration: a management plan for the protection of the area's natural resources
and the enhancement of its growth potential through the conversion of farmland to other purposes. In the same year, the

From the Bible, Genesis, 11, 4, English Standard Version, 2001.

71

MIC _ My Ideal City

building process of the Ave Maria town was initiated. Since the very beginning, the development plan included two
stages. The first stage, initiated in 2004, will be finished by the end of 2011 with the completion of the town centre (La
piazza, developed around the Cathedral), as well as the university and its campus. The second stage will define the
remaining services and residential units.
The Town of Ave Maria is the first modern town developed in conjunction with a University. Located just east of Naples,
it has been designed from the ground up to be a compact, walkable, self-sustaining town that reflects the communitys
rural roots while offering a full range of residential options and commercial services to its residents. Much more than just
a development, Ave Maria is a real hometown. Importantly, Ave Maria has been designed to human scale. Street
networks, distinctive character, and environmental sustainability are integral to its planning. It is a true community, a
place where residents of all ages, backgrounds, ethnicities and religions live, work and play where neighbors care
about neighbors, friendships span generations, and a sense of pride is felt by every resident, student, business owner
and employee.2
The town is built, in principle, around a religious ideal, while its morphology reflects its Cathedral which is the landmark
of an identity that will eventually gather or form there. Consequently, the town is programmatically, if not expressly,
reserved or at least directed to a specified user: it is an explicitly Catholic town even in name. Ave Maria is a place
designed on the basis of, and projected towards, an ideal. It is the edification of the community that Monaghan has
always longed for and whose realization is possible only thanks to the finite determination of a physical, enclosed space
(following the previous attempts represented by the Ave Maria Foundation, the Ave Maria Radio, and the Spiritus
Sanctus Academies). It is a perfect colony, fully resolved in the invariability of its characteristics, which are immanent
and present, yet aimed at reflecting the anticipation of an infinite domain, both transcendent and eventual: Heaven.
Ave Maria has been conceived of as a self-sustaining town, almost invulnerable to all that is other to it. However, at least
at the beginning, it still needs to turn to the outside: before generating residents internally, it needs to look for them by
proposing itself in the market as a product, strengthened by its distinctive characteristics. It is a space that does not
await the coming of the Messiah, but rather the arrival of a community that promises to form an anticipation of the
Kingdom of Heaven.
The Ave Maria community totals 5,000 acres, of which nearly 20% has been set aside for the University and its future
growth. Connecting the University and the Town is La Piazza, anchored by the landmark Oratory and incorporating retail
and commercial space as well as residential condominiums. Two additional commercial centers are included to provide
essential goods and services, entertainment and dining, enabling residents and students alike to live, work and play
within the community, often traveling by foot or bicycle. When completed, the Town will contain some 11,000 residential
dwellings in a wide variety of price ranges and neighborhoods. From condominiums to villas, and from starter to estate
homes, Ave Maria will offer something for nearly everyone. Community resources include an on-site fire/sheriff/EMS
building, as well as medical facilities provided by Emergency Physicians Network and Consolident Dental. A significant
network of parks and recreational areas has been included; in fact, about 45% of the town area is devoted to lakes and
open space.3
With compressed lead times, from a formal point of view the project and its translation into the buildings that form La

2
3

From www.avemaria.com.
Ivi.

72

MIC _ My Ideal City

piazza already show the characteristics that will define the entire town's space. The references to Siena, Lucca,
Florence, and Assisi in the names chosen to identify single sections of the project are simply baptismal distinctions (I
apologize in advance, but just for the fun of argument at least I want to contextualize myself). It is a space that,
through the use of determined forms drawn from an indefinite imagery, attempts to represent other open and timeless
forms.
The (architectural) language employed in the town fulfils Koolhaas's words: we can positively state that in this Potemkin
village we are witnessing weasel terminologies; still, to avoid being sacrilegious, I will restrain from addressing the
whole with the words he uses in his conclusion (a Satanic orchestration of the meaningless).4
Siena, Lucca, Florence and Assisi are real places that are evoked to benefit marketing more than architectural design
or urban planning. In Ave Maria there exist no actual reference to those contexts, let alone expressive forms of
community. Siena, Lucca, Firenze, and Assisi (the buildings of La piazza) comply not so much with somewhere else's
spatial laws which would be in any case impossible to extract and synthesize from Catholic Italy. Rather, they abide
by their own abstractions, projections of themselves which are unaltered in the becoming: it is Ave Maria (its founder)
that projects its (his) forms into time.
However, we need not look at this replica across the Atlantic to find instances of this phenomenon: even in original Italy
there are examples that move in the same direction. The hypostatization of certain Italian historic centres within an
absolute time that is absolutely nonexistent a trend that has characterized and still arouses enthusiasm in certain
parts of our national urban planning is nothing but the projection of static images implemented as laws of space
organization; projects that are by no means projective.
But in Ave Maria, I believe, there is something even more interesting that hides and shows itself; or, to recall the concept
of mask proposed by Tschumi,5 that veils and unveils itself. In Ave Maria, the Potemkin dual nature is fully
manifested, well beyond its simply being a double in the sense of a replica. There, the image of the self corresponds
to the law of the Other, or at least to a simulacrum of it. At the same time, however, that self does not become the
Other, and certainly not in the (banal) sense of a failed correspondence between an original and its copy. In Ave Maria
a town and at the same time a founding community everything is controlled; everything appears to be determined even
in its becoming.
What differentiates the culture of the planned community from other cultures of urbanism is its exclusive focus on the
complete, well-designed, and self-contained unit of human settlement. Planned communities of all sorts (...) are united
by a common, optimistic purpose. All are asking, and attempting to answer, the same question: can the ideal human
settlement be planned coherently and all at once, as a separate, distinct entity? (...) Many believed that planning for
complete communities was necessary to ensure the quality of the environment. It was the only way to control the whole

Globalization turns language into Junkspace. We are stuck in a speech-doldrums. The ubiquity of English is Pyrrhic: now that we all speak it,
nobody remembers its use. The collective bastardization of English is our most impressive achievement; we have broken its back with ignorance,
accent, slang, jargon, tourism, outsourcing, and multitasking... we can make it say anything we want, like a speech dummy... Throught the
retrofitting of language, there are too few plausible words left; our most creative hypotheses will never be formulated, discoveries will remain
unmade, concepts unlaunched, philosophies muffled, nuances miscarried... We inhabit sumptuous Potemkin suburbs of weasel terminologies.
Aberrant linguistic ecologies sustain virtual subjects in their claim to legitimacy, help them survive... Language is no longer used to explore, define,
express, or to confront but to fudge, blur, obfuscate, apologize, and comfort... it stakes claims, assigns victimhood, preempts debate, admits guilt,
fosters consensus. Entire organizations and/or professions impose a descent into the linguistic equivalent of hell: condemned to a world-limbo,
inmates wrestle with words in ever-descending spirals of pleading, lying, bargaining, flattening... a Satanic orchestration of the meaningless... Rem
Koolhaas, Junkspace, in October Vol. 100, Obsolescence, Spring, 2002.
5 Bernard Tschumi, Advertisements for Architecture, in Opposition n. 7, 1976.
4

73

MIC _ My Ideal City

range of factors influencing planning outcomes.6
This is the aim that was pursued. In Ave Maria everything is designed: from the space to the way you experience it;
however perhaps nothing in this project is pro-jected: i.e., really inscribed in the becoming. This enclave is provided with
finite physical boundaries and development programs that will end upon completing the last building and selling the last
store. An environmental protection strip has already been regulated. The 11,000 residents will inhabit living solutions that
are diversified, even though, being all pre-arranged, certainly not customized. Economic independence will be ensured,
it is said, by the presence of the private university which will see to supplying, among other things, control over the
religious education of students (i.e., at least this is the hypothesis, the future residents) who, in this regard, will be
rigorously selected.7
Even though the town is ultimately directed towards the maximum possible extroflection i.e., the other-wordly
everything in it will be absolutely introspective: no external compromising influence, no unexpected occurrence. At
least, of course, when the system is fully operational and regimented (I apologize again: I prefer the accidental and,
therefore, the regime implication in this last word, in reference to such a context, is decidedly intentional). Even the
products sold in stores will be subject to verification: no condoms in Ave Maria.8
It is a community that draws strength from a precise identity, which is protected against anything that might imperil it. The
determination of both its being and its becoming. However, this extreme determination, as is manifested in Siena, Lucca,
Firenze, and Assisi, might be more than a faade where someone else's image is painted in order to create one's own;
i.e., reproducing Italy in order to absorb its Catholic essence. It might be more than a veil that covers a stronger identity
(after all, the calling that Monaghan still feels is more likely directed towards business than architecture or priesthood: he
is the owner of all of the stores in La piazza).9 What is painted on those faades is perhaps no longer what it is, as that
shared ideal belongs to someone else. The actual is not what we are but, rather, what we become, what we are in the
process of becoming that is to say, the Other, our becoming-other. The present, on the contrary, is what we are and,
thereby, what already we are ceasing to be.10
That ideal was owned, indeed (by Monaghan, by his fellow residents), but the owner was a self in the past, at the time
when that ideal was formulated. Perhaps the fixedness of a Law that over time is engraved in stone causes that thing
that community to be already something other than what its forms express. If you crystallize an imagery into urban and
architectural forms that are so apparently absolute, if you fix an ideal defined by a culture which is necessarily the
expression of a space and time that have already elapsed, that have already gone by, you actually render that same

Emily Talen, New Urbanism &American Planning. The conflict of cultures, Routledge, New York 2005, p. 158. Particularly relevant the final
chapter: Conclusion. The Survival of New Urbanism.
7 If Ave Maria, at least officially, It is a true community, a place where residents of all (...) religions live, work and play, Ave Maria University is
declaredly monotheistic (Founded in fidelity to Christ and His Church in response to the call of Vatican II for greater lay witness in contemporary
society, Ave Maria University exists to further teaching, research, and learning at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the abiding tradition of
Catholic thought in both national and international settings. (...) As an institution committed to Catholic principles, the University recognizes the
importance of creating and maintaining an environment in which faith informs the life of the community and takes expression in all its programs.,
from www.avemaria.edu/aboutus/).
8 The Naples Daily News of June 19, 2009, reports the news of a free distribution of condoms from Planned Parenthood Association of Collier
County as a protest by their absence in shops and pharmacies in Ave Maria (www.naplesnews.com; www.floridaplannedparenthood.org). Tom
Monaghan, the founder of the Dominos Pizza chain, has stirred protests from civil rights activists by declaring that Ave Marias pharmacies will not
be allowed to sell condoms or birth control pills (...) Abortions, pornography and contraceptives will be banned in the new Florida town of Ave Maria
(...) The towns cable television network will carry no X-rated channels, Tony Allen-Mills, Pizza pope builds a Catholic heaven, The Sunday
Times February 26, 2006.
9 Susannah Meadows, Halfway to Heaven: A Catholic millionaires dream town draws fire, in Newsweek, February 27, 2006.
10 Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, What is philosophy?, Verso, London-New York 1994, p. 112.
6

74

MIC _ My Ideal City

imagery and ideal precarious in their future dimension, regardless of the extent of your planning.
Here lies the dual nature of this Potemkin, this ideal city. As the elevations of the buildings are erected by making them a
replica of something else, so this community is being edified not around an ideal of its own, but in order to realize
someone else's dream.
I do not mean to insist on the fact that it is Monaghan's dream that defines those forms and that community, as it is
possibly a dream shared and felt as their own by the Marians themselves (will this be the name of the residents?). The
problem at issue is different, and a potentially universal one.
If what determines a community is culture, no matter which one, then in Ave Maria wherever one looks for a direct
translation of the participation here and now present in the production of steady forms culture is immobile,
univocally determined like in the Tablets of the Law.
A landscape exists when a culture insists on ceaselessly reinterpreting it and repeatedly connoting it, and not so much
on forming it. In Ave Maria, lacking a projection, absolutizing a principle into a form, and indissolubly binding them to
each other over time, causes the entire initiative to be only partial.
It is not the partiality of the values (Catholic) that makes Ave Maria's situation problematic. What prevents the projection
from being effective is imagining that an ideal (which is necessarily becoming) can be directly transmitted to space and
volume (which are in fact static).
Participation turns into exclusion not for the banal reason that if a community is too cohesively built around a principle,
thus featuring too strong an identity, it necessarily excludes others. The issue is, rather, that if a community participates
in such a presupposition, it necessarily excludes itself from its own evolution within those same premises.
In order to become-other, become a community, participate in the ongoing edification of an ideal city, it is necessary to
let go of the ideal. To conceive an ideal city, it is necessary to be without an ideal.
I now go alone, my disciples! Ye also now go away, and alone! So will I have it. Verily, I advise you: depart from me,
and guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he hath deceived you. (...) Ye
venerate me; but what if your veneration should some day collapse? Take heed lest a statue crush you! Ye say, ye
believe in Zarathustra? But of what account is Zarathustra! Ye are my believers: but of what account are all believers! Ye
had not yet sought yourselves: then did ye find me. So do all believers; therefore all belief is of so littleaccount.11
Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one anothers speech. So
the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.12

11
12

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus spake Zarathustra, translated by Thomas Common, The Modern Library, New York 1917, pp. 82-83.
From the Bible, Genesis, 11, 7-8, English Standard Version, 2001.

75

MIC _ My Ideal City

WEAK CITY. Ecotonal strategies for urban landscape

Giovanna Bua, DEAS, Universit degli Studi di Milano
Elisa Cristiana Cattaneo, Politecnico di Milano
Chiara Locardi, Politecnico di Milano
Maria Chiara Trabacchi, Ca Foscari Universit di Venezia

Its not necessary for the true always to take on material form...the idea that I want to bring in here is bound up with the lingering resonance of
poetry after it has been heard, with the recollection of architecture after it has been seen.
This is the strength of weakness; that strength which art and architecture are capable of producing precisely when they adopt a posture that is not
aggressive and dominating, but tangential and weak.1
I. De Sol-Morales

1. Assumption
Crisis of Architecture, crisis of architectural instruments
The assumption upon which the research is built, identifies the problems of contemporary exaltation of the object as
being self-legitimized and introverted. It determines as well a cultural system that is increasingly oriented to the
exaltation of the magnificent, the extraordinary and self-referenced forms. By quoting Maldonado, those shapes can be
defined "fantasmologiche"2, making the wonderful as the supreme instance of legitimizing everything3. By quoting
Baudrillard they can be defined ipertheliche4.
This assumption does not refer only to an idea of a strictly compositional argument, but it entails wider considerations
regarding the relationship between architectural object and citys reasons, the consequential spaces at different scales,
expressiveness in contemporary urban project and, above all, the issue of architectural project interpreted as place for
both material and immaterial relationships.
Moving from the assumption that architectural discipline is affected by the same loss and instability that general
knowledge suffers, we highlight some of the problems which are currently under debate and we exploit those problems
as starting point of our analysis.
First of all the concept of landscape shell be clearly explained into the epistemological framework Space, Place, Context
and Landscape and its new design categories shell be identified with respect to different contexts.
As second point, given this switch to landscape, it goes without saying that classical categories of urban design became
unable to address contingent issues such as ecological problem. Classical instruments (fixed and finite shapes and
absolute paradigms) decay as well.

I. De Sol Morales, Weak city, in Differences, ed. The Miss Press, Cambridge, 1996.
T. Maldonado, Reale e Virtuale, ed. Feltrinelli, Milano, 1992.
3 T. Maldonado, op. cit..
4 J. Baudrillard, Le strategie fatali, ed.Feltrinelli, Milano, 2007.
1
2

76

MIC _ My Ideal City

During last decades scientific Ecology has been the theoretical background for a new ethics proposal . Such a new ethic
corresponds to an idea of urban ecology based on the eco-organization principle, as developed by Edgar Morin 5. The
new ethic is needed by the contemporary global culture: ethos extends the limit of nomos 6 to the whole planet. We are
all guests , temporary and nomadic.
Going back to the concept of Landscape, we refer to a culture which conceives landscape as a vehicle for a new
heuristic category, thus stimulating a wider consideration pertaining to the relationship between the territories and
society. Landscape represents a spatial, cultural, economical and social entity. It is a guarantee for wellbeing and
democratic equity, a real political instrument aimed at the construction of a background for a better life, in spatial and
ecological terms, as well as in symbolic and ethical terms.
Societies have always established physical, symbolic, mythical and ecological relationships with their territories;
nowadays they are less readable and defined than in the past, since both territories and societies are themselves more
unstable. Facing this underspecification, the society of landscape7 expresses its need to reconstruct the image of
beauty, located within and beyond urban culture, so as to find in the assertion of diversity a way of opposing to
homologation and trivialization, and to devise a means for self representation. This society codifies a new epistemology,
based on multifold thought, which reconsiders a different conception of living and building life space. The culture of
landscape adds to the responsibility some crucial environmental issues, a new utopian vigor, which involves each
activity related to thinking and doing a realistic utopia that does not claim to be scientifically rigorous but which offers
itself as a project for a society8.
The role of landscape projects in contemporary city construction and its demo-ethno-anthropological dimension
becames, in this sense, the themes which define the frame of the study. A theorical context emerges which takes
transdisciplinarity as the necessary preassumption for the understanding and construction of places. The discourse
extends to the critical territories of contemporary urban transformations, to those disused and ambiguous landscapes
which are animating current scientific debate. It is finally established that the functional and figurative redefinition of the
city is necessarily bound to the elaboration of new interpretative and operative strategies, focused on landscape
projects.
The specific purpose of the present study is to identify, assess and discuss in a holistic manner urban shape, in a socioecological system perspective (SES). The Resilience Alliance (2005), defined SES as complex adaptive systems in
which humans are part of nature, and the dynamics of both dimensions are strongly coupled and linked at equal weight.
The concept emphasizes the humans-in-nature perspective where the integrated human society and the ecosystem
are subject to reciprocal feedbacks and interdependence. A transdisciplinary approach is needed/is important in
understanding the complex dynamics and connection characterizing socio-ecosystems9.

As every organiz-action, the eco-system is involved in a permanent process of disorganization and reorganization. The word Organiz-action
translate the french one organisaction. On the sublject, refer Morin. E., La Mthode I. La Nature de la Nature, Ed. du Seuil, 1977. Notes p. 266; and
Morien E., Il pensiero ecologico, Ed. Hopeful Monster, Firenze 1988, p. 102.
6 On the relationship beween ethos and nomos refer Venturi Ferriolo M., Etiche del paesaggio. Il progetto del mondo umano, Roma, Editori Riuniti
2002.
7 Donadieu P., La Socit paysagiste, Ed. Actes Sud-Ensp, Arles 2001.
8 Mininni M., Abitare il territorio e costruire paesaggi, in DONADIEU P., Campagne urbane. Una nuova proposta di paesaggio della citt, Donzelli
Editore, Roma 2006, p. XIII.
9 http://www.gdrc.org/sustdev/concepts/23-u-eco.html: In particular Urban ecosystems apply the socio-ecosystem approach to urban areas. Urban
ecosystems are dynamic ecosystems that have similar interactions and behaviours as natural ecosystems. Unlike natural ecosystems however,
5

77

MIC _ My Ideal City

2. Weak: a term, a method, a theme

A strategy for urban planning
Our analysis consider the researches about Landscape Urbanism10 (C. Waldheim, 1997), its evolution in Ecological
Urbanism

11(Graduate

School of Design, Harvard University, M. Mostafavi, C. Waldheim, 2009) and its categories

(anticipate, collaborate, sense, curate, produce, interact, mobilize, misure)12 as possible holistic frame to overcome the
dichotomous terms of reading and writing cities, in order to solve some specific problems of selected urban areas.
Crucial instruments of our research will be the following concepts of Ecological Urbanism instead of the classical urban
concepts:

Transdisciplinarity of the research (C. Waldheim, 2006; J. Corner, 2006)13;

Hybridization of the concepts of city and countryside;

Ecosophy as a supporting philosophy (M. Mostafavi, 2009);

Participatory process as a strategic frame work.

With reference to the above mentioned framework, the research develops through three consequential steps: first of all
Weak city as general strategy for urban design, Ecotone as one of the possible reading instrument for marginal
places, and Agricultural urbanism as one of the operational instrument of such hypothesis.
By the analysis of the word weak and, through its "factorization" and transposition, we try to delineate a theory and
practice for urban design.
Thus, the purpose of this research is to test whether the weak architecture, is able to overpass the typical notion of
designation identified by the built space14, by stressing the role of open and relational spaces. In particular:

- Consider urban design as result and place of contextual relations;

- Consider context as field of material and immaterial relations;
- Use non pre-figurative codex for reading and writing architecture;
- Amplify the role of contextual difference in contrast to global atopy;
urban ecosystems are a hybrid of natural and man-made elements whose interactions are affected not only by the natural environment, but also
culture, personal behaviour, politics, economics and social organisation.
Urban ecosystems can no longer be considered as a separate entity to the environment as they have direct and indirect impacts on the immediate
and wider environments. Many of the environmental problems faced today (eg global warming, water and air pollution and inadequate access to
safe drinking water) can be traced back to cities and lifestyle choices.Urban areas act as population centres providing goods and services not only
for its population, but also for populations worldwide. Urban ecosystems can no longer be considered as a separate entity to the environment as
they have direct and indirect impacts on the immediate and wider environments. Many of the environmental problems faced today (eg global
warming, water and air pollution and inadequate access to safe drinking water) can be traced back to cities and lifestyle choices. With urban
population levels expected to reach 60% in the next 30 years and the majority of urbanisation to occur in developing countries, urban environmental
management is being increasingly important.
10 Waldheim C., The Landscape Urbanism Reader, New York:, Princeton Architectural Press, 2006.
11 Mostafav M. i with G. Doherty, Ecological Urbanism, Baden, Lars Mller Publishers, 2010.
12 Mostafavi M. with G. Doherty, op. cit..
13Waldheim C.: Interdisciplinarity is not the calm of an easy security;it begins effectively when the solidarity of old disciplines breaks down, perhaps
even violently, through the jolt s fashion - in the interest of a new object and a new language and J. Corner: Perhaps most importantly, it makes a
productive attitude towards indeterminacy, open-endness, intermixing a cross-disciplinarity (...) Landscape Urbanism views in an emergent
metropolis as a thick, living mat of accumulated patches and layered systems, with no singular authority or control , in C. Waldheim, op. cit..
14 A. Branzi, Modernita debole e diffusa, ed. Skira, Milano, 2004.

78

MIC _ My Ideal City

- A limitation of built space, in favor of the open and relational ones, reversing and changing the relation figure /
background;

- Reactive existing built, by micro-colonization;

- Identification of a "weak", marginal, decorative design, verifying if its identity can be used for contemporary city;
- Use of technology as constituent instruments;
- Reactivation of the environment and sustainability, freeing them from natural camoufflage.
Furthermore, the concept of Weak identifies the architectural language as "decorative". In this sense, the research of I.
De Sola Morales is crucial: What I have called weak architecture is always decorative. Let no one be shocked:
decoration is a parole maudite, a dirty word in the modern tradition, yet there is nonetheless a clear need to go back and
reflect on the significance of the term and on the fundamental meaning of the notion of decorum that underlines that of
decoration...the decorative is also the inessential; it is that which presents itself not as substance but as accident:
something complementary that will even lend itself...to a reading that is not attentive but distracted, and which thus
offers itself to us as something that enhances and embellishes reality, making it more tolerable, without presuming to
impose itself, to be central, to claim for itself that deference demanded by totality. Decoration, then, or the decorative
condition of contemporary art and architecture, not in the sense of vulgarity, of triviality, of the repetition of established
stereotypes, but as a discreet folding back to a perhaps secondary function, a pulling back to a function that projects
beyond the hypothetical ground of things. ..the decorative is not of necessity a condition of trivialization of the vulgar, but
simply constitutes a recognition of the fact that for the work of art, sculptural or architectonic, an acceptance of a certain
weakness, and thus of relegation to a secondary position, may possibly be the condition of its greatest elegance and,
ultimately, its greatest significance and import.15
This strategy modifies the three common design categories of contemporary city: reading, interpreting and design .
We simulate a strategy that identifies:

The ecotonal landscape as one the possible weak citys place;

Climate change as one of the initial causes and agricultural urbanism as operational instrument.

Places and instruments could change whereas different antropogeographical context would be considered.

3. Reading and interpreting contemporary city

Ecotone as a paradigm: open ended urban landscapes
The places where urban and landscape design shares the goal of a sustainable territorial transformation are the border
landscapes. Unstable, critical, waiting for a meaning and a form, those landscapes have a fragile nature16, and they are
the places for design innovation, for the comprehension of the dmesurable 17,and for the heterogenous 18 invention.

De Sol-Morales Ignasi, Weak Architecture, in Differences, Topographies of Contemporary Architecture, ed. The Mit Press, Cambridge, 1997.
On the subject of lanscape fragility, refer Goula M., Fragilidad, in Colafranceschi D., Landscape. 100 palabras para habitarlo, Editorial Gustavo
Gili, Barcellona 2007, pp. 79-81.
17 On the subject, refer Lassus B., Une potique du paysage: le dmesurable, Plaquette, Paris-Vancouver, 1976; and Venturi Ferriolo M., Il
demisurabile, in Paesaggi rivelati. Passeggiare con Bernard Lassus, Ed. Guerini e Associati, Milano 2006, pp. 90-4.
18 The global landscape needs the invention of heterogeneous [...] It consists in a-ermanent evolution dynamic. Venturi Ferriolo M., Paesaggi
rivelati, op. cit., p. 99.
15
16

79

MIC _ My Ideal City

Looking to the processes of urban contemporary transformations, the image of limit shell be substituted with the one of
borders as it is defined by ecology : an exchange membrane between tissues, mosaics, patches. The idea of border is
therefore useful both to underline the spatial dimension of the study and to suggest the linking points between the above
mentioned landscapes and Ecotone ecological structure.
Ecotones 19 are defined as the switch habitats -natural or human- amongst different habitats.
There are many definitions of the Ecotone20, concept but the most interesting for our research is elaborated by the
ecologist Almo Farina: we prefer to consider an ecotone more as a paradigm than a structure. In fact only if we
recognize the heterogeneous and patchy nature of a landscape/habitat/ecosystem, can we utilize the ecotone as a
proto-principle 21.
Therefore, the ecotone could be seen as a generating spatial condition and as a physical and phenomenic dimension. It
is an amniotic liquid where life is allowed to express its differences and contrasts, aiming toward an always unstable and
undefined equilibrium.
According to those disciplinar contributions of Ecology, the Ecotone introduces a new principle to manage the
contemporary city transformation: instruments of urban design will be heading towards a weak trend (insertion,
transition, trasposition, sequence, visual connection), in order to build relational and open-ended spaces. Starting from
the assumptions of landscape as a process and of the project sites as dynamic organisms, the urban design cannot do
other than arrange the places to welcome their often unpredictable future.
Thus, based on the above mentioned considerations we suggest a new urban category: the Ecotonal Landscape. It is
the place of the mdiance 22, where heterogeneous23 is allowed to happen and evolve in its whole complexity.
According to the whole frame that we have outlined, the brotherhood between the terms border-ecotone-landscape

24

takes place: they shares spatial, temporal, imaginative dimensions. The critical triad expresses the trajection (sensu
Berque)25 of the human world, which is an evolutional and creative relationship between physic and phenomenic.

4.

Writing: climate change and agricultural urbanism

Cities and climate change vs. cities the incubators for change
By simulating one of the Weak city possible application, one of the novelty of our research is to consider, in developing
countries, climate change as starting point and agricultural urbanism as practical and transdiscipliray instrument.
Over half of the earths population lives in cities and this share is increasing yearly, expected to reach approx. 60% by
2030 (OECD 2008). Developing countries will play the greatest role: most of the urban population growth is expected to

The word Ecotone comes from ancient greek: Oikos (home) e Tonos (tension).
Border areas, buffer zones, cross areas or habitats, exchanging zones of energy, materials and informations.
21 Farina A., Ecology, Cognition and Landscape. Linking Natural and Social Systems, Dordrecht Heidelberg, London NewYork, Springer, 2010, p.
86.
22 Cest pour cette raison que je forgeai, en fin de compte, le nologisme de mdiance, partir de la racine latine (med-) de 'milieu', et en cartant
mdite qui me chantait moins loreille. Berque A., Mdiance de milieux en paysages, Reclus, Montpellier 1990, p. 28.
23 Venturi Ferriolo M., Paesaggi rivelati, op. cit.
24 The intermediation of Ecotone allows a new epistemologic equilibrium between the terms. The border, as a residual place, acquires a specific
identity. The landscape is strenghted as a relational element. The ecotone is the exchange membrane, an hybrid surface.
25 French word trajection comes from latin trajectio. Augustin Berque use the word to express the idea to overcome a limit. Berque A., in AA.VV.,
Mouvance. Cinquante mots pour le paysage, ditions de la Villette, Paris, 1999, p. 85.
19
20

80

MIC _ My Ideal City

occur in these countries with growth rates roughly double those of developed ones26(Hallegatte and Corfee-Morlot,
2011).
Urbanization and population concentrations are linked to concentration of economic and industrial activities and
production (OECD, 2009). Being crucial engines of the global economy, cities are responsible for a large portion of
national output, GDP, employment (OECD, 2006). As such, they are also responsible for the consumption of 60-80% of
worlds energy (IEA, 2008) and, are thus considered to be the most important source of greenhouse gases (GHGs)
emissions approx. 70% of the total (UN, 2009)27 significantly contributing to the global climate change (CorfeeMorlort et al., 2009). From main cause to targets: high concentration of population, economic activities and valuable
settlements, makes cities particularly vulnerable to potentially severe climate change-induced impacts.
In fact, although large uncertainties still exists when it comes to downscale projections and estimates to city-level, the
IPCC concluded that cities are particularly vulnerable to [..] extreme weather events, rather than to gradual climate
change28. Likewise, various ecosystems services, such as [] water, food supply, energy, information systems and
waste disposal [..], can [also] be subject to climate-related extreme events such as floods, landslides, fire and severe
storms (IPCC, 2007).
An example of this vulnerability is reflected in the catastrophic damages wrought in a low-lying city such as New Orleans
by a hurricane-induced storm surge in 2005 (Hallegatte, 2006). The European heat wave in 2003 that killed 30.000
people, half of which in France only (Beniston, 2004), is another example of the types of extremes that could become
more common with changing climate conditions.
Particularly, cities located in coastal areas represent a topic of widespread concern because of factors related to the
significant vulnerability of society as settled near shore , sensitivity of the environment, and their exposure to a wide
range of climate-induced hazards increased risks of extreme events, sea-level rise, storm flooding, storm surge, etc.
which can results in a variety of natural and socio-economic impacts. (IPCC, 2007; UN-Habitat, 2009).
Climate change, however, is seldom the main threat. Its impacts need to be compounded with increasing humaninduced pressures (demographic dynamics, land use changes, etc.) and their interactions with the climate system.
Being centers for knowledge, cities are incubators of change, driving innovation and entrepreneur ship. They are
uniquely equipped to address global climate change. There is already evidence of actions undertaken at the city level on
this regard. A number of cities are increasingly initiating activating mitigation actions29, working together in transnational
networks in order to activate reciprocal learning and strengthen GHGs reduction efforts30 (Corfee-Morlot et al., 2009;
Betsill and Bulkeley 2007).
The way cities will develop over the coming decades will significantly influence global communitys ability to face climate
change. It will determine GHGs emissions trends as well as the vulnerability of the society to potentially adverse
impacts.
Timeframe: In the 2005-2030 timeframe.
It should be mentioned that the IPCC made no estimates for the relative role of cities in GHGs emissions but some assumptions have been made
(see for instance UN, 2009 for additional information on the topic).
28 Extreme weather events associated with climate change pose particular challenges to human settlements, because [] populations in both
developed and developing countries are increasingly located in coastal areas, slopes, ravines and other risk-prone regions. IPPC, 2007.
29 i.e. reduction in GHGs emissions.
30 An example is the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, a group of large cities committed to tackling climate change. Source:
http://www.c40cities.org/. Another example is represented by the effort put in place by the Mayors signatories of the so-called Mexico City Pact
(2010). With this action, local leaders of 138 urban centeres stated theiry will to develop and implement local climate-change action plans and
initiatives. Source: http://www.wmsc2010.org/.
26
27

81

MIC _ My Ideal City

Adequately chosen urban policies will play a key role as they can climate-proof urban development planning,
infrastructures, improve the energy system, resource efficiency and emission performances of the built environment.
In developing countries, The case studies will be selected amongst megacities areas of four emblematic Developing
Countries - Brazil, India, Republic of China, Republic of Korea - and analyzed in a comparative way.
Especially in Asia, urbanization is happening today. Integrating climate change responses and sustainability
perspectives into urban development plans is thus of the utmost importance. The design and development of new towns
is an opportunity to introduce best practices in architecture, building construction and urban planning.
The cornerstone of developing future low-carbon cities and ensure a low-carbon growth for emerging countries, heavily
relies on their access to modern hard and soft technologies.
Developed countries should thus transfer state-of-the-art environmentally sound technologies as well as training
people to use them in order to avoid the environmental mistakes made by the industrialized world. The imperative is
to accelerate their introduction and use. The fast growth in population and economic activity occurring in these countries
will in fact come with increased pollution. This is not simply a local issue as it will ultimately contribute to increase global
environmental problems.

Urban Agriculture
Urban agglomerations and their resource uses are becoming the dominant feature of the urban species (human)
presence on earth, profoundly changing humanitys relationship to its host planet and its ecosystems (Deelstra and
Girardet, 2010). The business as usual trend to draw upon resources from ever more distant areas or without taking into
adequate care the natural systems ability to sustain human-pressures and regenerate, need to be changed. The
challenge faced by urban areas is to transform themselves into self-regulating, sustainable system not only in their
internal functioning, but also in their relationships to the human-system (Deelstra and Girardet, 2010).
Cities have an enormous potential for food growing (e.g. Smith et al., 1996). Urban agriculture, can therefore, contribute
to the sustainability of cities in various ways: environmentally, economically and socially.
The interdisciplinary approach is devoted to combine different visions and to identify multipronged tools. We discuss
urban agriculture as a bridge between economic and ecological systems. Taken as given its role as node between urban
economy and ecological system, namely its urban dimension; hereafter, we outline its role as bridge between economic
system as a whole and climate change.
Agriculture and climate change are characterized by a complex cause-and-effect relationship. The practice of agriculture
produces significant volumes of greenhouse gases, the prime culprits for climate change. At the same time, however,
agriculture is affected by the negative impacts of the climate change in terms of reduced productivity and increased food
safety risks. Solutions able to interrupt this vicious cycle can currently be traced to mainly two macro areas: relocalization of agricultural production and innovation in agrifood management and practices (e.g. Cline, 2007).
A flavor of the problem, without pretending being exhaustive, is given by the means of few relevant data:

82

MIC _ My Ideal City

Agriculture accounts for the production of approximately 3 0%31 of all annual greenhouse gas emissions
worldwide (IPCCC, 2007);

At least 6000 tons of food is expected to be imported into cities each day (Nugent and Drescher, 2000);

As regards to the effect of overheating on agricultural output, keeping the same agricultural surface, the drop
in worldwide agricultural output will be at level of almost 190 billion dollars per year. On a worldwide level
India, Mexico, Australia and Brazil will be the Areas hardest hit. (Source: Peterson Institute for International
Economics);

Climate change also has consequences on food security32;

Nonetheless scarcity of food resources would impact social security33 ;

From an economic point of view, it is worth noting the fast increases in the price of basic foods as a result of
a combination of supply and demand factors that have temporarily displaced price equilibrium. The main
reasons are: urbanization, economic growth, biofuel subsides, climate change & adverse weather conditions,
land and water shortages, underinvestment in rural infrastructure and agricultural innovation.

What is of interest to our discussion is to be asking what role urban agriculture can play in the mitigation and
management of the exposure to market changes in prices and in the adaption and mitigation to tackle climate change.
Urban agriculture can be defined shortly as the growing of plants and the raising of animals within and around cities.
The most striking feature of urban agriculture, which distinguishes it from rural agriculture, is that it is integrated into the
urban economic and ecological system: urban agriculture is embedded in -and interacting with- the urban ecosystem.
Such linkages include the use of urban residents as labourers, use of typical urban resources (like organic waste as
compost and urban wastewater for irrigation), direct links with urban consumers, direct impacts on urban ecology
(positive and negative), being part of the urban food system, competing for land with other urban functions, being
influenced by urban policies and plans. (IDRC, 2008)
In particular urban agriculture includes: backyard sharing, gardening and sharing garden produce, patio gardening, walls
for food, vertical farms, rooftop gardens, vacant lot gardens, farming in city outskirt, any micro climate in the city used for
producing food.
Urban Agriculture with a good network of periurban farms has the potential to address the produce, and dairy
requirements of the cities.

5. Further research
Even if the relative importance of urban agriculture is rising both as an economic activity and also as a contribution to
environmental management-here are different challenges and gaps to be filled.
As for the economic point of view, it is incumbent on the research community to better pursue comparative economic
data on the value of urban agriculture. Nonetheless despite the fact that there are numerous examples of success in
This data include forestry activities.
Food Security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet their dietary
needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life - World Food Summit, 1996.
33 The European Commission, in the spring of 2008, acknowledged climate change as a dangerous multiplier capable of exacerbating all the other
trends, tensions and existing factors of instability.
31
32

83

MIC _ My Ideal City

including small scale farmers in markets, it is difficult find replicable models and methodology. Further studies on the
transfer of technologies and models able to replicate this methodology in different context are needed.
Moreover political, social and architectural solution must be identified.
In this terms, we see the weak city as e possible solution and flexible strategy to model urban agriculture in specific
context, in developing country.
This approach is a fundamental need to develop and implement an ethical and ecological common sense.

References
1. Assumption
Baudrillard J., Le strategie fatali, ed. Feltrinelli, Milano, 2007;
Baudrillard J. and Nouvelle J., The singular Object of Architecture, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2002;
Baumann Z., La societa dellincertezza, Bologna, 1999;
Baumann Z., Modernita liquida, Bari, 2000;
Debord G., La societa dello spettacolo, ed. Baldini Castoldi Dalai, Milano, 2008;
Derrida J., Posizioni, Ed. Bertani, Verona, 1975;
Donadieu P., La Socit paysagiste, Actes Sud-Ensp, Arles 2001;
Donadieu P., Campagne urbane. Una nuova proposta di paesaggio della citt, Donzelli Editore, Roma 2006;
Gregotti V., Identita e crisi dellarchitettura europea, ed. Einaudi, Torino, 1999;
Maldonado T., Reale e Virtuale, ed. Feltrinelli, Milano, 1992;
Rella F., Figure e miti del moderno, ed. Feltrinelli, MIlano, 1993;
Virilio P., La Deriva di un continente, conflitti e territorio della modernita, ed. Mimesis, Milano, 1994;
Virilio P., Estetica della sparizione, ed. Liguori, 1992;
2. Weak city
A.A. V.V., Ecological Urbanism, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Lars Muller Publisher, 2009;
Aureli P., The Project of Autonomy, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2007;
Branzi A., Modernita debole e diffusa, ed. Skira, Milano, 2004;
Branzi A., Moderno, Postmoderno, Millenario, ed. Studio/forma/Alchimia, Milano, 1980;
Branzi A., La quarta metropoli, ed. Domus Accademy, Milano, 1990;
Branz A., Luoghi, ed. Idea Books, Milano, 1992;
Branzi A., La crisi della qualita, ed. della Battaglia, Palermo, 1997;
Corner J., Taking Measures Across the American Landscape, ed. CT:Yale University Press, New Haven, 1996;
Corner J., The Agency of Mapping Speculation, Critique and Invention, in Mapping, a cura di D. Cosgrove, ed. Reakton
Bppks, Londra, 1999;
Deleuze G., Che cos un dispositivo?, ed. Cronopio, Napoli, 2007;
Derrida J., La scrittura e la differenza, ed. Einaudi, Torino, 1990;
De Sol-Morales I., Weak Architecture, in Differences, Topographies of Contemporary Architecture, ed. The Mit Press,
Cambridge, 1997; traduzione italiana: Architettura debole, in Ottagono n. 92, 1989;
De Sol-Morales I., Introduction, in Differences, Topographies of Contemporary Architecture, ed. The Mit Press,
Cambridge, 1997;
De Sol-Morales I., Terrain Vague, in Anyplace, ed. The Mit Press, Cambridge, 1995;
Hays K. M., Critical Architecture Between Culture and Form, in Perspecta n. 21, 1984;
Waldheim C., The Landscape Urbanism Reader, New York:, Princeton Architectural Press, 2006;
Waldheim C., Lafayette Park Detroit, ed. Prestel Publishing,2004.
3. Ecotone
84

MIC _ My Ideal City

AA.VV., Mouvance. Cinquante mots pour le paysage, ditions de la Villette, Paris,1999;
Berque A., Mdiance de milieux en paysages, Reclus, Montpellier 1990;
Colafranceschi D. , Landscape. 100 palabras para habitarlo, Editorial Gustavo Gili. Barcellona 2007;
Farina A., Ecology, Cognition and Landscape. Linking Natural and Social Systems, Dordrecht Heidelberg London
NewYork, Springer, 2010;
Lassus B., Une potique du paysage: le dmesurable, Plaquette, Paris-Vancouver 1976;
MorinE., La Mthode I. La Nature de la Nature, Ed. du Seuil, 1977;
Morin E., Il pensiero ecologico, Firenze, Hopeful Monster, 1988;
Venturi Ferriolo M., Etiche del paesaggio. Il progetto del mondo umano, Roma, Editori Riuniti 2002.
Venturi Ferriolo M. Paesaggi rivelati. Passeggiare con Bernard Lassus, ed. Guerini Associati, Milano, 2006.
4. Climate change and Urban Agriculture
Beniston M., The 2003 heat wave in Europe: a shape of things to come, an analysis based on Swiss climatological data
and model simulations, Geophysical Research Letters 31:1-4, 2003;
Betsill M., Bulkeley H. , Looking back and thinking ahead: a decade of cities and climate change research, Local Environ
12(5): 447456, 2007;
Cline W., Global Warming and Agriculture, Centre for Global Development, 2007;
Corfee-Morlot J., Kamal-Chaoui L., Donovan M.G., Cochran I., Robert A. and Teasdale P.J , Cities, climate change and
multilevel governance, OECD Environmental Working Papers N 14, 2009, OECD publishing;
Deelstra T., Girardet H., Urban agriculture and sustainable cities, Thematic Paper, 2010;
Hallegatte S., Cost-benefit analysis of the new Orleans flood protection system, in Regulatory Analysis 06-02, edited by
A.-B. C. f. R. Studies, 2006;
Hallegatte S., Corfee-Morlot J., Understanding climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation at city scale: an
introduction, in Climatic Change ,104:112, 2011;
IPCC: Climate change 2007: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, M.L. Parry, O.F. Canziani, J.P. Palutikof, P.J.
van der Linden and C.E. Hanson, Eds., Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 976 pp., 2007;
OECD, Competitive Cities in the Global Economy, OECD, Paris, 2006;
Smit J., Ratta A., Nasr J., Urban agriculture: food, jobs and sustainable cities, Publication Series for Habitat II, Volume 1.
New York: United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 1996;
UN-HABITAT web site accessible at: www.unhabitat.org;
IDRC, Urban agriculture and changing food market, Canada, 2008;
RUAF Foundation, Resource centers on urban agriculture & food security (http://www.ruaf.org/node/512 );
Havaligi N., Climate change and food security in cities, Fifth urban research Symposium , 2009;
Nugent R. & A.W. Drescher: Electronic Conference on Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture on the Policy Agenda SDDimensions, October Update, Sustainable Development Department, FAO, Rome, 2000;
C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, web site available at: http://www.c40cities.org/;
Resilience Alliance, http://www.resalliance.org/;
UNDP, World Urbanization Prospects: the 2009 Revision database, available at: http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/index.htm
World Mayor Summit on Climate, web site available at: http://www.wmsc2010.org/;
Acronyms
GDP
GHG
FAO
IEA
IPCC
SES

Gross Domestic Product

Greenhouse gases
Food and Agriculture Organization
International Energy Agency
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Socio-ecological system/Socio-ecosystem

85

MIC _ My Ideal City

Soundwalking.
A new tool for urban regeneration
Laura Basco, DPPU, Universit di Napoli Federico II

There is no better way of taking in life than walking the streets.

Soundwalking is a practice of focused listening in which one moves through an environment with complete attention to
sound (music, noises, voices and tales). Any environment can provide space for soundwalking. Sometimes the walks are
guided by a written or verbal instruction. The participants may walk blindfolded, or stand still, or move in response to the
soundfield. Sometimes the walker activates the soundscape - "playing along" with the sounds - using the voice, musical
instruments or objects encountered along the way.
A soundwalk can furthermore cover a wide area or it can just centre around one particular place. No matter what form a
soundwalk takes, its focus is to rediscover and reactivate our sense of hearing.1
The pioneers of this kind of experience of soundscape have been mainly artists: under the guidance of Canadian
composer R. Murray Schafer, a small group of musicians and activists set forth on the World Soundscape Project
(WSP)2 in the early 1970s in an attempt to document and raise awareness of the world's acoustic environments. The
researchers oriented themselves to an area by sound and to record the sounds of the environments that they walked
through. They used this soundwalk method to identify and record the soundscapes of Vancouver and, later, five
European villages.
The World Soundscape Project was the earliest organized exploration of acoustic ecology. Combining sociology, urban
planning, ecology, philosophy their work has influenced composers, researchers, ecologists and activists. Westerkamp
(1974, revised 2001) provides a useful introduction to the art of soundwalking and describes it as any excursion whose
main purpose is listening to the environment.
The practice of listening while walking has a long history in philosophies of walking (Thoreau 1862; Schaub 2005), as
well as practices of walking meditation.

1
2

H. Westerkamp, Soundwalking, Sound Heritage, Volume III Number 4 ,Victoria B.C., 1974, revised 2001.
http://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/handbook/wsp.html

86

MIC _ My Ideal City

"Walkers are 'practitioners of the city,' for the city is made to be walked. A city is a language, a repository of possibilities,
and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities. Just as language limits what can
be said, architecture limits where one can walk, but the walker invents other ways to go." (Solnit, 2000)
Lately in the early 1990s Janet Cardiff, a Canadian artist, started and continued, until recently, an artwork made of a
series of walks. In these works she reinvents the format of audio walks.
The Cardiffs walks focuses little on the exhibitions, creating instead a fictional narrative. Most of these walks begin in an
intuitional space then either diverge outdoors into the streets. The user is given a headset, and a mp3 and follows the
instructions of the voice through the earphones3. Cardiff uses binaural technology creating a 3D audio experience. The
audio is a orchestration of recorded everyday sounds, fragments of stories and instructions given from the artists voice.
A fictional plot begins to play out in an staggered reality surrounding the users as they move through the space.
From June to September 2004 she composed Her Long Black Hair 4 a 35-minute journey that begins at Central Park
South and transforms an everyday stroll in the park into an absorbing psychological and physical experience.
Many others have gone on to adapt the original concept of the soundwalk and use it in a variety of contexts that extend
it; a collection of projects that do use sound as an artistic form in an urban environment. Sounds are expressed,
mapped, analyzed; each example shows different approaches and possibilities of how to apply methods of soundwalking
in an interactive way:
"Streetscape", a project of the Japanese artist Iori Nakai, consists of a plastic map with the sounds of the city "attached"
to it. When tracing over the city's white map with a special pen, you can hear everyday noises that were recorded at that
particular location: conversations, passing traffic, and all the ambient sounds that make a city.
A soundwalk can be designed and listened in many different ways, we can walk by ourselves or in a group, we can stay
at home and listen back to the soundwalk, we can also take part actively to build together a sound map of our city5, like
in the project City of Sound developed by the composer Michelle Nagai.
In this collaborative project anyone is invited to submit a map and route description for a soundwalk - actual or imagined
- that is situated in the five boroughs of New York City. These will be posted on the site as they come in..
Our main focus is to investigate soundwalks and the impact they have on society. This exploratory work is put into
practice in artistic exhibitions, interventions in public space and in the development of social software and interfaces, but
soundwalking take several applications for alternative tourism in disadvantaged and multicultural neighbourhoods.
Soundwalk and audiowalk could engage tourists, inhabitants and non-residents to walk through areas with
disadvantaged status and rarely-visited.

The format of the audio walks is similar to that of an audioguide. You are given a CD player or Ipod and told to stand or sit in a particular spot and
press play. On the CD you hear my voice giving directions, like turn left here or go through this gateway, layered on a background of sounds: the
sound of my footsteps, traffic, birds, and miscellaneous sound effects that have been pre-recorded on the same site as they are being heard. This
is the important part of the recording. The virtual recorded soundscape has to mimic the real physical one in order to create a new world as a
seamless combination of the two. My voice gives directions but also relates thoughts and narrative elements, which instills in the listener a desire to
continue and finish the walk, Janet Cardiff, The Walk Book Walther Knig, Kln, 2005.
4 The audiowalk titled take place during a winding journey through Central Park's retracing the footsteps of an enigmatic dark-haired woman.
5 http://www.cityinasoundwalk.org/submit.html
3

87

MIC _ My Ideal City

The most significant example in this field is the Vesterbro Site, a collection of six audiowalks guided by the voices of
six young writers and artists; they have produced their own audio walk through Vesterbro each of them giving a
different angle to their favourite part of the history of the district.
Vesterbro used to be known as Copenhagen's working-class neighbourhood and red light district. During the last ten
years the district to the west of the Central Station has undergone a massive transformation.
The audio-walks are aimed at providing the listener with a personal account of Vesterbro, thereby allowing foreign
tourists and local citizens to experience an inside-view of life in Vesterbro. Fantasy and reality come together in the
audio-walk experience, in a way that is impossible to achieve through the more common "written-literature" guides.
One's experience of the neighbourhood becomes both intimate and direct when accompanied by the "sound-literature"
guide6

GIU NAPOLI.
Down to Naples. Soundwalk in mp3, duration 30 min., along a 414-step-stairway in one movement or 10 stops.7
What is then the sense of space that an auditory experience can reveal? We tried to inquire (and answer) the role of
hearing in daily experience, as an element defining space beyond the geometrical configuration of sites.
We soon realized how this inquiry intersects a central issue of urban design related to anthropology of space: the life of
spaces, beyond the function for which they were designed. The auditory experience may allow them to survive over time,
even for the period of a performance, a practice or an event, designed as a non-trivial variation of their potential
flexibility. It is a matter of practicing collective listening .

6
7

http://www.copenhagen.dk/en/whats_on/events_english/walking_tours
Gi Napoli is a work made by IndiziTerrestri, a multidisciplinary urban research network based in Naples and Madrid.

88

MIC _ My Ideal City

Our experimental project, called GiuNapoli (Down to Naples), (this is the common expression Neapolitans living on a hill
use when they have to go to the city center) has been based in Naples, during the Maggio dei Monumenti 20088, in a
particular place, the Pedamentina, a staircase connecting the hill of San Martino to the historical city centre, along a
steep and fascinating slope including several visions of the city, both panoramic and foreshortening.
The walk is an exception among others: it was not built over a water course (as most of this kind of walks in the historical
city) but as a connection between the mountainside and the top of the Vomero hill. The walk was built in the same period
that St. Martins charterhouse was founded and it was commonly used to carry construction material to the hill.
The walk is not much frequented and in same place in state of decay.
The Pedamentina, as other stairways connecting the lower city with the hilly city, is mostly used by residents but seldom
as a pedestrian alternative to cable railways. We choosed this walk for 2 reasons. One is sound, since, in such a
context, theres the possibility to keep city sounds on the background. In fact the everyday soundscape of the city is
muffled in the begin of the walk, is inaudible in the middle, and only at the end, at the final steps, we begin to listen the
traffic noise. I listen in my headphones for the first time to the sound of my footsteps.
Another reason is trying to put back together some fragments of Naples urban memory: in 1978 the Pedamentina had
been, with other stairways, the scene for Naples on foot, a popular event organized by university researchers aimed at
discovering new pedestrian routes in the city by mobilizing residents. Every Sunday, for 7 weeks, people got together
Maggio dei Monumenti is the most important cultural event takes place in Naples since 1994. Every year in May the city of Naples celebrates its
heritage with a festival during which visitors can obtain entry to cultural sites that are usually closed to the public, benefit from free guided tours and
enjoy free entry to museums and other monuments over the five weekends of the event. Moreover numerous cultural meetings by theatres, opera
and concert halls as well as author readings are accomplished. Some of the monuments open their doors after final restoration for the first time. In
the project was involved the municipality, schools and cultural and turistical associations.

89

MIC _ My Ideal City

with cultural and theatre associations, providing a program of

various activities (recitals, live music, theatre

performances, etc..) aimed at improving awareness about the importance of pedestrian routes in the city. Naples on foot
was suspended at the beginning of the 80s in the aftermath of a major earthquake.
The Pedamentina is a walk for few: residents, famous travellers, some brave tourists walking down to the city center; a
place for loving couples, a secret passage of urban flaneurs, cited just in a few tourist guides. Real estate rates in the
are of the stairway, despite it is quite close to the center, are rather convenient. Today, with the historical residents, one
can find young couples and students. The walk is quite degraded, with the exception of pieces in front of houses.
Through the audiowalk we invited residents and tourists to join a collective experience in a pedestrian space.
Each one listens by himself, but if you reverse the condition from isolation to sharing, the sound experience may produce
surprising effects. In the lapse of what could get lost, because its outside our listening space, people can get that lapse
according to their rhythm and using it for a different function. Its almost like in the Silent Raves which transform a silent
collective listening in a true sound experience. In many stations, from Liverpool Street to Victoria Station in London, or in
squares such as Union Square in NY, groups of people acted dancing flash mobs right thanks to a multimedia device.
In a precise moment, everybody turned on their iPod and started to dance silently but according to the same rhythm,
transforming those spaces in meeting and dancing places.
This kind of flash mobs work as happenings and occur in public spaces or shopping malls. This critical dancing mass
transforms the nature of those spaces in a powerful collective perspective (Brighenti and Mattiucci, 2008).
"Rave" or form of wild dancing party where all of the members listen to music through headphones on seperate portable
music players. The players are all synchronized so everyone is hearing the same thing, but no outsiders hear anything,
hence the "silent" portion of the name. The police didn't bust the silent rave down the street because nobody complained
about the noise.
It is a sound path, which offers an alternative to the usual way of perceiving the city: the audiowalk is made possible
through the listening of a story telling voice, which connects monuments, buildings and places.
Participants to the audiowalk get together at a meeting point and there media players are distributed for the tour. As
result, a kind of ongoing performance is staged in which the participants are both actors and bystanders at the same
time. A sound path, as an alternative to ordinary visions of the city, moved on by a voice, has been designed to connect
monuments, buildings and places into a narrative.
Making a precise date, and distributing multimedia drives, we played a sort of moving show, where visitors were actors
and audience at the same time. The sound narrative has been designed as a synthesis of different features of the city,
arranged in different scenes the traveller could hear and see.
The soundtrack was made of dialogues, sounds and music as in theatre pice about the citys architectures.The city
became a stage to watch and practice, as people moved down watching the same things that were told in the sound
track and somehow making the exhibition of themselves.
Through a sound transfer the contemporary traveller could meet old-times travellers, from Benjamin to Beuys, living in
the lecture of an actress standing still in some corners of the staircase, in a time shock occurring when headphones were

90

MIC _ My Ideal City

off. The common sound experience has produced a true alteration of the vision of places, for those who were watching
them and even for inhabitants who were watching these people.
The format design has been the occasion to talk about public space and how people use it, to reflect on the relation
between the future and the memory, through a patchwork of visions occurring when people use a multimedia driver.
Through the sound experience the experience of space becomes thicker, and can be understood through social relations
and immaterial, synchronic relations.
The influence of new media in these phenomena of alteration or even enlargement of places is crucial, sometimes as an
existential condition. In this sense, iPod can be seen as a device to read/create/interpret space.
After 2008 the Pedamentina has been a location of other public events and included in some new tourist guides. But the
walk is still not well kept by local Administration. We consider our work experience as a micro co-regeneration project, a
spark for an innovative public space policy supporting urban projects "from the bottom up" , the small parentless piece of
a Russian doll: the selection of suitable spatial scale for the development of an urban regeneration programme or
project is akin to unpacking a Russian doll: each level of policy must be considerer an appropriate acknowlegment
should be given to the other layers of policy both above and belove the specific activity which is the focus of concern.9

References
SCHAFER R. MURRAY, Vancouver Sound Diary, Vancouver: ARC Publications, 1977a.
SCHAFER R. MURRAY, European Sound Diary, Vancouver: ARC Publications, 1977b.
SCHAUB M., Janet Cardiff: The Walk Book,Thyssen-Bornemisza. Koln, Koenig, 2005.
SOLNIT R., Wanderlust: A history of walking, New York, Viking, 2000.
THOREAU H. D., Walking. Applewood, Bedford MA (Concord), 1862.

Roberts, Peter and Skyes Hugh (2000) Current Challenges and Future Prospects, Urban Regeneration A Handbook, London: Sage Publications, 295-314.

91

MIC _ My Ideal City

Where we discuss?
Mario Andrea Valoria, Institute of Economics and Marketing, Universit IULM
Virginia Dara, Universit IULM
Alessandra Sighinolfi, Universit IULM

1. Spaces and democracies

The places where we live, often regarded as only a background for our action, have a significant influence in our lives;
our choices in work, study, report and our passions depend largely on where we live or where we lived.
is well known that even the way we express ourselves and relate to others depends on where we come from; the places
where we lived over the years talk and seduce us, shaping it in their image and likeness. Habits, behavior and character
are very dependent on where people have grown up; and these characters are universally recognized, however, through
stereotypes that often reflect real life situations and behavior. Just think of the European context, where normally we
regard the people of the Mediterranean countries as more open, passionate, superficial and yet cordial than the
inhabitants of the Nordic countries, to which we associate feelings of coldness, efficiency, and self-closing.

We decided to test this idea by applying it to the field of participatory democracy1; various practices of dialogue and
cooperation may indeed influence the approach to the concepts of information sharing and decision which are the basis
of participatory democracy (which is increasingly seen as an alternative to a system of representative democracy, that is
showing their limits in the global world).
In early results, very interesting, we have added a second level of study, based on physical locations to conduct the
debate and democracy, a particular experiment, to see if the space of action could have influence on how and what we
decide.
The study group consists of students from some of the most important universities in Milan2; a choice that is justified not
only because of the ease in finding participants, but also for the students'willingness to dialogue and discussion (a
necessary element to minimize the presence and assistance from the moderators).

Assignments: Mario Andrea Valori: par. 1, 4, 5; Alessandra Sighinolfi: par. 2, 5; Virginia Dara par. 3, 5.
In relation to the study presented later, the Italian territory was divided as follows: North (Piemonte, Valle d'Aosta, Liguria, Lombardia, TrentinoAlto Adige, Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia), Center (Emilia-Romagna, Toscana, Umbria, Marche, Lazio and Abruzzo) and South (Molise,
Campania, Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria, Sicilia and Sardegna).
2 Respectively Universit Statale di Milano (www.unimi.it), Universit Statale di Milano Bicocca (www.unimib.it) and Universit IULM di Milano
(www.iulm.it).
a

92

MIC _ My Ideal City

The research was based on three instruments of representative democracy (public meetings, consensus conferences
and deliberative opinion polling) and each of them has been explored through 18 separate studies with each other, so
we can provide a sufficiently representative sample.

2. Public meetings
First form of representative democracy that we analyzed was the public meeting, which provided an initial starting point
for subsequent searches. Given the nature of the instrument, in this case we decided not to in any way limiting access to
the discussion but only to monitor the participants according to gender, place of birth and history of transfers, we have
also given the opportunity to be present to anyone interested in the debate but only moderators and students could
discuss. 6241
We can say that we have noticed a fair participation in the debates (21.88 people) with a slight female predominance
(53%); the majority of participants also intervened accompanied by someone you know (only 22% said they did not know
any of the other participants).
Each debate lasted 90 minutes and offered light refreshments for participants. We have held six discussions for each
university (18 debates total) on three specific issues - the legalization of light drugs, illegal immigration and italian return
to nuclear energy. However, we noticed that the topic discussed had no effect in a particular way on the results of the
study.
The main statistical data from the study are summarized in the following table:

Participants

# opinions

Opinion's lenght

Participation index3

North

195

3,1

60

186

Center

97

2,8

85

238

South

102

4,7

55

258,5

An element, potentially problematic to calculate, regarding participation in the debate; if it is true that only 35% of
participants were intervened (with a slight preponderance for the south), we noticed that there is a different organization
of contributions by the students. In fact, while students in central Italy have focused on a direct relationship, intervening
when necessary, students in the North and South have created the team leader; especially in the first group (North)
interacting one-on-one and the second (South) create microgroups that promove a leader, who would later express the
general opinion.

3. Consensus conferences
The different structure of the consensus conference has allowed us greater control over students participating in the
experiment. So we invited to participate in 18 groups of 16 participants with a greater selection of the initial sample, such
as to have a nearly equivalent number of people originating in northern, central and southern Italy.
3 Index created by us to compare the participation of every individual in an easy manner. It consists of the product of the number of interventions
and the duration of the same for each candidate. Obviously it makes no sense to compare participation rates among different tests.

93

MIC _ My Ideal City

The topics presented were the same as public meetings, addressed by a procedure consisting of a total of 4 meetings
for each group, 3 for information on the subject and one on the drafting of the final document. All matches have lasted 1
hour.
The main statistical data from the study are summarized in the following table:

Participants

# opinions

Opinion's lenght

Participation index

North

99

10,9

65

708,5

Center

94

12,1

75

907,5

South

95

12,9

65

838,5

In a way different from what happened to the public meetings, participation in the discussion was much broader (78% of
participants intervened), with steady growth during the first three meetings (38% in the first, 56% in the second and 76 %
in the third) and a sharp decline (44%) during the writing of the final document, except for students of southern Italy that
have different series, organized as 41% - 54% - 81% - 69%.
We also asked participants, two days after the end of the meetings, to make a brief summary of the final document; all
the papers were submitted to the reading of groups of universities first year students, with the aim of identifying the
views of 'author, not knowing that the texts were the result of a summary of another document. In this case we can show
how the most faithful to the original document have been students of the South (86% recognition), followed by those in
the north (73%) and central Italy (68%).

4. Deliberative opinion pollings

The last structure we have analyzed is the deliberative opinion poll; even in this case the test sample was equally
divided between north, center and south, as well as the structure, divided into 4 sessions of one hour each. In this case,
however, following the typical course of the deliberative opinion pollings, we proposed to the participants in a survey
consisting of four statements to which we must respond by indicating their agreement from 1 to 10. The first three
meetings were organized with the assistance of an expert on the subject for the first 20 minutes, followed by 40 minutes
of debate; while the fourth was left entirely to the debate.
The main statistical data from the study are summarized in the following table:

Participants

# opinions

Opinion's lenght

Participation index

North

96

9,7

60

582

Center

96

10,1

65

656,5

South

96

9,3

45

418,5

In this case, unlike the previous one, there has not been a variation in participation among the various meetings (the
value was stable at 47%) except for students from southern Italy, where we noticed a marked difference between the
first three meetings (the participation rate of 23%) and fourth (41% participation rate, almost in line with the average).

94

MIC _ My Ideal City

Very interesting were the results of the final polls, which have reported significant changes. Normally, in fact, who had
chosen strong values (from 8 or more, then with a high approval rating, or from 3 or less, then with a powerful rejection)
has strengthened its opinion, while most people hesitant has follow the prevailing opionions in the group. Again,
however, we must indicate differences in the students of southern Italy, which showed a stronger decline in the
intermediate values and a decline, although reduced, even more rooted in the values above, always held the opinion for
the majority.

5. Ideas and considerations

The study, presented here only in its essentials, has identified a different approach to the various forms of representative
democracy in relation to the place of origin of the persons examined, a proof of this is that staying away from their place
of originally brought in to assume an increasingly dominant place of the other characters involved.
Another important element but not discussed due to space was the difference found between students from towns and
large (ie greater than 60,000 inhabitants) than in other subjects; we have noticed how the live in a big city increases the
number of interventions and at the same time decreases (albeit slightly) their duration, but at the same time, reduce,
albeit slightly (approximately 10%) recognition common decisions, both in the consensus conferences (the documents
drawn up individually they were more discordant than the origin), both in the deliberative opinion pollings (where there
has been a less migration among the undecided in the second survey).
Another interesting issue to note, but which is currently under investigations, concerns the authority of the expert
consultation (which has a greater influence on students coming from the south), and definitely unexpected element, the
type of place where the meetings take place .
At the moment we feel like at least two elements are significant in this sense, the first is the perception of luxury or
authority that emanates from it, while the second concerns the familiarity with individual users.
In the first case the students in the south have had more difficulty in taking action, something that had no effect on those
of the center and in fact seemed to encourage students in the north. In the second case, as if to compensate, were
students of southern Italy for an increase in the quantity (+5%) and particularly the length of the interventions (+18%).
This study represents a track, a first map of a field yet to be explored. But above all it is a warning not to ask just where
we are going but also where we are at the moment of the debate and where we came from. Two questions that are often
seen as abstract but seem to make sense also in reference to our geography reality.

95

MIC _ My Ideal City

Informal inside the contemporary new urban question

Anna Agostini, PhD Candidate QUOD, Universit Iuav di Venezia
Michele Sbrissa, PhD Candidate Urbanism, Universit Iuav di Venezia

1.

Introduction

This paper is developed through the reflections that come from the interweaving of two paths of research, with the direct
experience in urban planning and urban transformation projects in Italy and abroad who have provided opportunities for
direct experimentation of approaches, theoretical principles and applications in the field. The themes to which it refers
are to be placed in the experience gained by working with the doctoral research units inside the Universit Iuav of
Venice, the Hafen City University in Hamburg, Sheffield University, Isai in Lige and the University of Florence. At the
same time, have been essential the experience of active participation in projects such as: the new urban plan of the city
of Vicenza (2009-10) and Padua (2008), the sustainable urban development plan of the city of Iquitos, Peru (2010) and
numerous participatory processes at urban and regional scale.

1.1 The city project between public good and private enterprise: some research questions
The thesis underlying this work is that it is necessary and essential to formulate operational strategies in line with a
theoretical apparatus that can confer legitimacy, substance and foundation to the themes of participation and
contamination of urbanism with informal practices of use, exploration and design of contemporary cities (Jenkins and
Forsyth, 2010), toward scenarios that are able to be truly sustainable and inclusive. Beyond the value/disvalue of
individual cases, this must be done in broad perspective of rebalancing the crucial role of urbanism, its tools and its
objectives. The common denominator on which this paper, and ongoing research from which it is taken, try to reflect, to
explain this position, consists of the imaginary and the enormous quantity of practices that gravitate around the concept
of informal, on which, at least partially, we aim to reflect.
Never before this historic phase, the external pressures to the project, the urban project, for the city and its public
spaces, come from diverse areas: private stakeholders (Bianchetti 2008), singular or corporate interests, in which public
opinion now devoid of any real critical mass because of its fragmented nature, has no choice but to surrender for
initiatives in which the balance of interests leads the public to give up a "necessary conflict" in exchange for less complex
positions and apparently easier to justify, particularly in political short term. It tends to succumb to lose its rights
(including constitutional), constantly crossed by an over production of interaction, instruments, interests, too agile and
96

MIC _ My Ideal City

changeable, in which the correspondence between the individual, society and territory is increasingly less identifiable, in
which the concept of participation moves with enormous contradictions through diametrically opposed fields of
knowledge, through ongoing testing and far from rare and accidental exploitation.
- How will change the project for the city, for the public space, and what will be the possibility to work on hypothesis of
generation and regeneration through inclusive, sustainable and consistent processes?
- What is the disciplinary role of urbanism in this planning scheme, which is the tangible value of the plan?
The cards to play in this crucial game can and should be those of innovation of planning process and public role inside it,
also exploration some paths so far traveled with distraction or superficiality, with no mature attention to the opportunities
that they could offer. Within a disciplinary framework, which compares with a complex new urban question, this reading
aims to research a strategic and fruitful interpretative framework, able to cope with the ambiguous and tense balance
between public and private, for the government, the management and the design of the city. In the light of what has been
mentioned so far we just close this first proposition opening to some issues that will certainly not have an adequate
discussion in this paper, but they make good game for the arguments that follow, serving as a constant reminder to
some fundamental themes.
- What is the role of planning in a scenario like this: where countless people, more and more disconnected with each
other, are physically active in the permanent transformation of the territory, in its design, planning, human settlement,
with a clear split into two centers, who undergoes changes, and who actively puts them into action?
- Is there a chance for the plan (what kind of plan?) to be meaningful and effective, within urbanized areas that are
characterized by a continuous intensification of flows and intangible assets, building products, manufactured goods and
enclave more or less impermeable to the contest; where the degrees of freedom of individuals are less and less, their
forms of social production and public values are going down and at the same time are more and more planned,
programmed and privatized, in which nothing more is left to chance, in which private capital legislate on public good?
- Who has the ownership of a plan-project and how is possible to manage it, in a context where the public, as public
administration, is gradually crumbling under the blows of a private capital which cant compete?
- The plan as a bureaucratic tool, which accounts for 90% of the urbanization of the territory, can evolve into a concrete,
sustainable and inclusive way? Can it improve on the fundamental question of its applicability and implementation on
medium-long time frame - inertia the plan - (Secchi 2000), with all that implies in the social, economic, administrative and
ultimately political?

2. Keywords
2.1 Informal and participation
The common denominator, the filter through which we offer a reflection, is the relation (we stress relation and not the
individual words taken individually) between two concepts, already cited, that pervade the contemporary urban imagery,
even in implicitly and under different terms, often nave; the two terms in question are participation and informal.
There is a long and dense tradition that we can draw on to explore the meaning and the origins of the first of the two

97

MIC _ My Ideal City

words: classical authors of modernism, cutting-edge experiences and more or less successful experiments, important
case studies through the years that arrive until today. In the case of the second term, initially much is attributable to
Anglo-Saxon and American experiences, then rapidly developed along two main roads: the first one about developing
countries under the definition given by the United Nations since the 70's, the second one about artistic experimentation,
essentially in the same period, which in recent years, we would say the last decade, is returning in a big wave (for
example the recent experiment of Mendinis Domus). Both words found theoretical and experimental peaks in recent
years, confirming the interest that that they produce cyclic.
Until the mid '80s and early '90s, the territory has been interpreted as an extensive palinsesto in which the single actor,
by isolated or aggregated forms, has found an open space, an area of conflict, for the creation of a social, economical
and spatial project, reflecting and translating social and economic practices in a printed map on the ground, through
industrial areas, residential subdivisions, service areas, big shopping malls and business districts (Pasqui and Lanzani,
2011). This has been the dangerous ridge on which our cities have developed since first sixties, almost always chaotic
and irregular, beyond and despite the constant attempt of urbanism and planning to rule the urban phenomena. This
scenario, that does not concern us further here, is however the clear evidence of a historical phase in which a new
colonization of the territory, by interests, functions, subjects, never seen before, has translated explicit and implicit
conflicts between private capital booming and public interest, into neighborhoods, suburbs, large industrial areas and
new towns.
Since first the 90s new informal and spontaneous practices are progressively growing In our cities, this tactics are less
and less local scenarios and increasingly looking to a territorial and global scales, which are based on a logic of
consumption rather than investment, less attributable specific to social groups, economic classes or specific local
identities. About this condition we can obviously refer to the illuminating Baumans image of liquid modernity: a shift, a
rapid acceleration in the change of some key conditions in our lives, in the perception of our role inside society as
citizens, as planners, a shift in which we are now fully immersed. Sociologists and anthropologists have worked hard to
describe this situation: a state of broken rules and forms of regulation of social relations, both self-produced and/or
informal, rarely held by the public; a welfare system that we struggle to define, even if it is there, in front of us, in which
there are countless and endless arbitrary conditions, in which pre-established relationships and balances often become
irreconcilable conflicts, directly related to the reduction of the degrees of freedom acquired by individuals and
communities, within the city, in an immediately preceding historical period. The result is a creeping uncertainty about
progress, that does not look more like an element of growth, of improvement of living conditions, but rather as a train that
you cant risk losing, struggling day after day.
One of the first protagonists of this crisis is exactly the public sector, the political system, in its role as guarantor of the
collective good, in its role as a promoter of public interests.

2.1 The rhetoric of public-private conflict: an interpretation through the concepts of participation and
informal
The basic hypothesis is that there is a clear misunderstanding, to the contemporary approach to the theme of conflict
between public and private in the widest sense of the word, interpreted each time such as: negotiation, consultation,
98

MIC _ My Ideal City

participation, involvement, etc.. We can also state that this depends on a constant mystification of the relationship
between resources, objectives, stakeholders and the practices of inclusion, involvement, negotiation, between public and
private, at any scale. Today we are living, as city planners and first as citizens, in a kind of syncope, in which we have
perhaps not even appropriate terms to describe phenomena that escape from pre-determined category, but at the same
time they appear and are reported as facts, as factors which seem to provide just a clear and unambiguous result from
their combination.
Nearly frustrated from having refined techniques, proven tools through countless best practices, technologies that help
as never before to work according to principles of interaction, involvement and information sharing: we do not know how
to use them effectively, how to make them effective and what they can really do for us. On one hand, we have extremely
advanced techniques and technologies for exploration, classification and mapping on the other we have no capability to
translate data into scenarios, projects and programs. We know, as never before, the city, in terms of statistics, quantities,
size, we have prediction tools on streams and indicators, but it is also clear that we cant translate this into a project, to a
tangible answers for our cities and their future. This highlights two issues linked with each other.
The first is the fragmentation and the technicality with which these issues are dealt with, by giving them a specialist aura,
sometimes almost scientific (participation, conflict mediation, conciliation), the second one is a sort of utopian and
visionary approach (post situationist mapping, occupation of urban spaces, temporary buildings), depriving them out
from the real debate inside urbanism and planning, that instead might need these contents at all scales and in all stages
of the process. All this surrounds these two terms, informal and participation, in the roles of actors ex ante or ex post, but
always out from the urban design process, and so never completely inside the theoretical and technical growth of the
plan. They are often used in an instrumental or purely informative way, denying by facts many theoretical statements,
more and more frequently used to "put on a show" or communicate, to build consensus, sensation, images of progress,
rather than to produce true contents and strategies. The concepts of participation and informal, are combined, either
implicitly or explicitly, into more and more active processes of transformation of the city, as regard public space in
particular, but they are in the hands of institutional and private organizations that most of the time use them in
contradictory and rhetorical ways.

3. The concept of informal as a resource for the project of contemporary city

Our real experience, our daily life, connected to public space is made against any disciplinary code against every
planning attitude, a dense network made of jumps in scale, from the smallest detail of the glimpse of an old door, to the
global vision of a gps navigation system. The text that we cross every day, our city, the territory in which we live, is a
place for himself in constant rewriting, where exactly these heterogeneous and scattered fragments on the outskirts of
urban consolidated spaces, are able to represent, most of the time, the real fixed and important points from which to
start, again, every day.
The effort to search inside urban practices, in the ephemeral informal uses, tangible and intangible, in the instances of
active participation that populate our city, the symptoms of a new collective imperative that claims the city for what it

99

MIC _ My Ideal City

should be, is essential to realize that the text on which we used to build our urban knowledge is completely changing
under our feet.
Kandinsky wrote: "...a city built by the rules of architecture is suddenly shaken by a force that challenges the
calculations, in this strong image lies the challenge of knowing how to interpret the signs, more or less obvious, that
inhabit the urban space, that live in communities and turn them up, to dream of a city that knows how to express both a
general overview, an horizon, and at the same time an accurate and careful attention for single and outdated detail.
Experimenting with new approaches and strategies to enhance the comparison between public and private, inside the
increasingly uncertain balance of the government of our cities, must pass through a new central role for the citizen,
understood as individual and collective, as part of a society that should restore an internal balance to deal with new
knowledge and face the challenges of the contemporary, often rhetoric, paradigms of sustainability and participation. At
the same time the public should re-shape itself with tools that will be able to be as consistent and sensitive to the
collective good, as articulated and flexible in their ability to adapt to a context where there are no more unidirectional
trends.
For the public sector the concept of participation (is it the right word?) can perhaps take on the meaning of the lever
through which to relocate its meaning and role in the near future, as protagonist of the formulation and implementation of
active instruments of territorial and urban scenarios and rules, that has to compete and mediate among the public
interest and private action.

The informal, understood in connection with the concept of participation can become a kind of factor of permanent
compensation, next to the plan and its rules, both in the processes of development of areas already "urbanized", whether
compact or diffuse, and in the development of new cities. In fact in the first case the more inertia - the time of the plan
100

MIC _ My Ideal City

(Secchi 2000), that is evident in consolidated urban tissues, can be answered only leaving enough space for functions
dynamically available at the time of application of the plan. In the second case, the globalization of individual
communities (Bauman, 2000) and their fragmentary search for identities, even through relationships with no
geographical coordinates, makes clear the need for non-linear and non-formal objects/spaces, open to non-progressive
and non-linear forms of co-existence of private and public inside contemporary city.

References
JENKINS P. and FORSYTH L., Architecture, Participation and Society, Routledge, 2010.
LANZANI A. and PASQUI G., LItalia al futuro: citt, paesaggi, economie e societ, Franco Angeli, Milano 2011.
AAVV, Joint action in architecture. Getting political again?, HAD, Graz 2010.
SECCHI B., Prima lezione di urbanistica, Laterza, Bari 2000.
SECCHI B., A New Urban question, Territorio, n. 53, 2010.
BIANCHETTI C. , Urbanistica e sfera pubblica, Donzelli, Roma 2008.
AAVV, Human Settlements. Formulations and (re)Calibrations, Sun Academia, 2010.
BAUMAN Z., La solitudine del cittadino globale, Feltrinelli, Milano 2000.
MIESSEN M. and BASAR S., Did someone say Participate?, Mit Press, 2006.

101

MIC _ My Ideal City

Walking as a creation of narratives and the formation of place

Claudia Patrizia Ferrai1, MA Landscape Architecture, University of East London

1. The start of the journey

A landscape is experienced through the quality of time, meaning, and space. A tool to understand this is starting from
the basic element: walking along a path.
Walking is a unique personal experience. It is a tool of reactions, creations of personal, and of local meanings, a
provocation of experiences. Walking encourages people to take ownership of their outdoor space, a vital element for the
deposit of memory, creation of sequence of incidents, stories, and the formation of places. Narratives are a way of
shaping our lives, integral to the making of places, and fundamental to cultural experiences. Relating narratives to
landscapes is a way to cross between disciplines, getting an insight into the relationship between nature and meanings,
memories and history, stories and interpretation, incidents and time, and the genius of place. Looking at the landscape
from this point of view allows for the creation, or preservation of places without losing less tangible elements, with the
potential for formation of spaces that reveal stories as we walk through them. As James Corner recognises, we perceive
the environment through the accumulation of often distracted events and every day encounters. The challenge lies in
the capacity in picking up all the meanings of the different readers, written by different authors (Corner, 2002).
This relationship between narrative and landscapes can be considered as a walking experience, a tool that is able to
create narratives and consequently a place. Yi-fi Tuan defined a place as a transformation of a space when it acquires
definition and meaning (Tuan, 1977).

2. Narrative, and landscape: the connection

Just as narratives are able to create places, particular features can create stories. The landscape is not just the
background of stories, but the foreground as well. As Potteiger and Purington suggest Stories link the sense of time,
event, experience, memory and other intangible to the more tangible aspects of place (Potteiger and Purington, 1998).
To read a landscape and transform it in a story we take it in using our perceptions and experiences, from vision, hearing,
smell and touch, and express this using language. Language creates meanings, but a place gains meaning not from the
designers plan and construction, but also from the people who use it. Like a patina, significance is acquired only with
time. And like a patina, it emerges only if the conditions are right (Treib, 2002).

The paper is part of the wider research done for my master thesis Trail Narratives: The experience of walking, University of East London, AVA,
MA Landscape Architecture, 2010. I am particularly interested in spatial narratives and in finding new ways to create a sense of place in
contemporary urban landscapes. Email: Claudia.ferrai@gmail.com

102

MIC _ My Ideal City

3. Fiction feeds reality

The landscape is a kaleidoscope, mirroring narratives, fiction, legends, histories and myths. It produces reflections that
are real and tangible. Encoded in our surroundings is a mixture of fiction and reality, constantly changing with time to
create new sequences, and patterns.
We switch from fiction to reality, and vice versa. Umberto Eco writing in Six Walks in the Fictional Woods says we use
fiction to give meaning to our existence, as it is more comfortable then life, we try to read life as if it were a piece of
fiction (Eco, 1994). Eco goes on by saying that we do not live in the immediate present, but thanks to memory we link
things and events, both personal and collective (history and myth), (Eco, 1994). Psychologists such as Jerome Bruner
argue that our normal way of accounting for everyday experience likewise takes the form of stories; so past events take
the form of narration (Bruner, 1991).
The story of our life is a mixture of these two types of memory: personal memory, as a recollection of our accounts, and
collective memory as the telling before we where born, from our culture, the surrounding landscape, and our beliefs. Eco
suggests the problems is that being the fictional world is so closely linked to the real one, after spending some time in
the narrative the reader no longer knows exactly where he or she stands (Eco, 1994). For example a real life has been
attributed to fictional characters like Sherlock Homes, and Siddhartha, and lots of people believe in legends, and myths.

4. Memory shapes our senses

Vauxhall Spring Gardens in Lambeth, London, like many urban spaces, has a history told through a fragmented
narrative of past peoples and events. The experience of the space reveals few clues of this however. I wanted to use
this as an example to show how to create a new narrative for such spaces.

Figure 1. Screen Memory. Reconstruction of Childhood Memories at Vauxhall Spring Gardens, 17 Nov 2010

103

MIC _ My Ideal City

Looking through some childhood photos, and using them as a memory trigger, a series of photos were created, to
symbolise memories of the park. The series of photos, titled Screen memory (Fig. 1), is a form of visual as well as
literary storytelling that encourages the viewer to engage and re-collect his or hers own memories. It is a way of showing
how memory is retrieved, and the choice of incidents among others. The images as events create sequences, and each
sequence is an incident: they are episodes of memory or triggers for further ones.
Psychologist Daniel Schacter states that memories are the fragile but powerful products of what we recall from the past,
believe about the present, and imagine about the future. They are an attempt to make sense of our experiences, and
are potent determinates of how we view ourselves and what we do. It is a kind of mental time travel, we can free
ourselves from the immediate constrains of time and space, re-experiencing the past and projecting ourselves into the
future at will (Schacter, 1996).
The whole landscape can be a trigger for memory. Picking a wild flower, for example brings you back to when you were
a kid picking daisies at the local park. Scenes like this bring together narrative and perceptual elements together.

5. Walking and narrative

Walking is more then lifting one foot after another, moving forward. It is an exploratory tool, that from around fourteen
months old we learn to do, moving experiencing, and feeling the space.
The resemblance of narrative with walking is so close. The writer creates a path from his imagination, or from a familiar
route. The reader-walker will follow the plot-path having the author as a guide, trusting him or not, but knowing that the
author will take him to a place. The reader-walker knows that before him somebody else has done the same route. He is
following the steps of people no longer there. He knows that it will take him to a destination, but he will not be certain that
it is his destination until he gets there. Paths as lines of the plot are laid out already for the walker or the reader.
The difference between walking and narrative are between the typology of the plot. Narrative is today conceived as a
pre-composed plot while walking is free of choice. Trail narratives, the experience of walking the landscape through
storytelling, offer spontaneity and the opportunity to wonder around, linger, and make new stories.
The best-known example of integration between landscape, narratives and walking are the Aboriginal songlines. A
knowledgeable Aboriginal person is able to navigate across the land by repeating the words of the song, which describe
the location of landmarks, waterholes, and other natural phenomena. By singing the songs in the appropriate sequence,
they can navigate vast distances.

6. The walking experience

The landscape in our modern society is often described as a static picture, but in reality it is made of incidents, which
engage with all our body: our senses, our mind, our experience, or beliefs.
Incidents trigger the perception to create an engagement. They consequently form the basis for the creation of
narratives. Incidents have their own logic, and momentum; they influence each other, and can be the outcome of events.
The influence of incidents on the walker depends on his or her speed, the level of attention of the surrounding
environment, and the aim of the walk.

104

MIC _ My Ideal City

2

The short film, If on an autumns morning , was created to capture the walking experience in an urban landscape. We
follow a woman leaving her flat in London, taking a lift, through a door, along a path, until she reaches a tree near
Regents Canal. The film records her movements through the urban space, picking up details of her emotions, and tactile
experiences. While walking, the woman remembers a past walk in the Peak District, and her memories are recollected
and reconstructed in the present. The woman lingers, gets lost in time, dreams and memories dissolve. It is a film about
time, space and memory. It explores the present as a definite time, overlooked by the past, remembered and
recollected. The two walks, real and remembered, lead the woman to a tree, a tree that is the centre of memories and
time. The film embraces the real and the imaginary-remembered time. The urban space becomes an imaginary wood, a
garden of times. Using the allegory of Borges, it is a garden with paths that fork, brake off, lead to somewhere, lead to
nowhere, that embrace all possibilities of time (Borges, 1970). All the possibilities of time: past, indefinite past, present,
take the viewer to the future, to the centre of this imaginary wood, the tree.

7. Designing in pathways
The landscape has a fundamental role in being able to create possibilities for narrative and this will only happen if
walking is left possible, and interesting.
Analysing and designing paths with only plan views, sections, and prospective drawings can be too simplistic an
approach, lacking the capacity to depict fully the tangible and intangible qualities of the landscape, and the persons
experience.
I used instead a technique I call the Walkingraph drawing method. This is a map that adds stories, perceptions, body
movement, shown through sequences of incidents. Visible, and invisible lines can be drawn from one image to another,
as our minds do when re-collecting, and re-experiencing memories. This adds an element of indeterminacy, and
subjectiveness. In the drawings, patterns, and forms arise, as a series of stepping-stones that mark the path,
punctuating the process and the engagement along it. As a walker you leave behind a scene, to see a new one in front.
Scanning the vertical stack with your eyes, you go from one frame to the next, hiding and opening up vistas.
This new notation was firstly tested and developed using a specific narrative, and then extended to a real walk. Firstly
the short film If on an autumns morning, was represented (Fig. 2), and then the concept was extended to the analysis,
and design of two paths at Vauxhall Spring Gardens, London (Fig. 3 and Fig. 4).

The short film If on an autumns morning C. P. Ferrai can be viewed on youtube at the following link http://youtu.be/uKg43k3vgJM

105

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 2. Notation If on an autumns morning

106

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 3. Walkingraph of an existing route at Vauxhall Spring Gardens, London

107

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 4. Walkingraph of the proposed route at Vauxhall Spring Gardens, London

108

MIC _ My Ideal City

Looking in more detail at the Walkingraph of Fig. 3 and 4, the analysis of the walking experience is done through the
following elements:
Frame: plan with the route highlighted. Location of incidents and direction of movement can be noted. Paths in red
indicate the analysed ones (present), blue the existing ones (past), and black the proposed routes (future).
Diagram of space and movement: objects, and actions, are indicated using the symbols of Halprin, and with others
added as necessary. A sense of confinement is indicated as a hatched area.
Enclosure: adapted symbols of Appleyard, Lynch and Myers of road enclosure are used. They are placed on the
vertical stack as when first encountered.
Views and incidents: this is the narrative of the path. It is a collage of photos showing changes in views, and
incidents. Coloured images are used to highlight existing and proposed incidents. Incidents are coloured in red, blue or
yellow for specifically present, past, or indefinite past memories located on site. The black and white images are the
views, and the background of incidents, and memories. Words to describe feelings, strong incidents, sensory stimuli, and
memories are used, coloured as the described colour coding.
Description of weather, time, and date: these are elements that strongly affect, and transform the experience in the
landscape.
The design of the park is limited to two choreographed walks, the go through path and the lingering path, because I
did not want to change, or delete, the existing layers of narrative, but only enhance the walking experience. Vauxhall
Spring Gardens remains made of a series of threaded layers, with a new added layer of incidents. The rest of the park is
left to future narratives that inevitably will be created with time.
The existing go through path (Fig. 5) is the path that people use to connect from north to south. It crosses the park, and
roughly cuts it in two. After gathering on site interviews and observations, I analysed the route with the use of the
notation, and a short film and come up with a route that goes in the same direction but fully threads the qualities of the
site. The analysis also focused on the movement in space, the incidents, and vistas at every 11 steps, giving a rhythm,
and sequence to the represented walk. Like Richard Longs maps, a recording of his walks, the go through path is a
union of 24 segments, each made of a word, a view, and an incident. This distance picked up incidents, changes in
vistas, and experiences along the route creating a rhythm that echoes the rhythm that we have while walking at a
constant velocity. It is an assumption that rarely happens in reality. Walking is done at variable speeds, depending on
various factors. As Ingold also confirms social life and time is rhythmic, intrinsic to the movement, instead of being an
artificial division into equal segments of a differentiated movement (Ingold, 2000). The go through path has been
designed as to support the perception of going towards something, and the creation of memories. Even if a path calls for
a sense of continuity, non-linear narratives are created by contrasts and individual character.

109

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 5. The proposed go through path at Vauxhall Spring Gardens in Autumn and Spring

Figure 6. The proposed lingering path at Vauxhall Spring Gardens in Autumn and Spring

The lingering path (Fig. 6) is a self discovered path. The incidents scattered around are to be discovered, creating a
choreographed walk depending upon the route each person takes. Violets, primrose, wildflowers, are hidden and
revealed. Seasonal interests, smell, colours, are all elements that create this unique walking experience. The incidents
are not designed but rather they result from a combination of precise location and the changing qualities of the
materials themselves. These incidents are connected spatially and narratively through the individual selection of a
route. This is an open narrative, where each route is never repeated. Even by a resident who wanders the park every
day.

8. The end of the journey

We have arrived at the end of this journey, a trip that took on meanings, discoveries, an experience in its own right. A
journey between You the reader, and Me the author. Thanks to your cooperation as readers, it has been possible with
words, and images, to create a narrative trail, which I hope will lead us as landscape architects - through sharing our
personal memories and experiences with the public spaces we design - to future discoveries.

110

MIC _ My Ideal City

References
APPLEYARD, D.; LYNCH, K.; MYER, J. R., The view from the road, MA, MIT Press, 1964.
BORGES, J. L., Labyrinths: selected stories and other writings, Penguin, 1970.
BRUNER J., The Narrative Construction of Reality, in Critical Inquiry, University of Chicago Press,1991.
CORNER J., Representation in Landscape, in Theory in Landscape Architecture Swaffield, S.R., University of
Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2002.
ECO, U., Six Walks in the Fictional Woods, Harvard University Press, London, 1994.
ENDER, E., Architexts of Memory. Literature, Science, and Autobiography, University of Michigan, Michigan, 2005.
HALPRIN, L., The RSVP cycles: creative processes in the human environment, Braziller, 1969.
INGOLD, T., The perception of the environment : essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill, Routledge, London, 2000.
LONG, R. & WALLIS, C., Richard Long : heaven and Earth, Tate, London, 2009.
POTTEIGER, M. & PURINGTON, J., Landscape Narratives Design Practise for Telling Stories, John Wiley & Sons, New
York, 1998.
SCHACTER, D.L., Searching for Memory : the Brain, the Mind, and the Past, Basic Books, New York, 1996.
TREIB, M., Must Landscape Mean?, in Theory in Landscape Architecture Swaffield, S.R., University of Pennsylvania
Press, Philadelphia, 2002.
TUAN Y.-F., Space and Place : the Perspective of Experience, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,1977.

111

MIC _ My Ideal City

Degrees of Freedom. The natural and rural areas as contemporary

generators of social affective synergies
Angel L. Gonzalez Morales, European Phd Polytechnic of Milan

1. Degrees of Freedom. Affectivity as memory and imagination

Slower natural processes may transform a ancient landscape, or social shifts cause bizarre
dislocations. In the midst of these events, people remember the past and imagine the future.
Lynch K., What time is this place?, MIT Press Media Departament, 1972

The actual existing relation between the population and the institutions, the monument and the house, shows us like still
today, one of the main problems of the city and the territory continues being "the will to restructure the city from above"
and the imposition of abstract conclusions that does not take in consideration the cultural dimension of the human
conviviality". This situation will become necessary the research and reinvention of instruments to promote and generate
new mechanisms of reinterpretation that allow the use of individual "auto-generated" relations and reactions existing in
the territory.
This text will begin from the idea of considering the affectivity like the origin of an "internal process" be able to generate a
new feeling of belonging. Sensation of amenity linked to a reinforcement of the freedom of choice, which will make us
focus the attention in the current need to rethink the role of the architecture from a symbolic point of view, and in
particular as a consequence of the action of singular individuals, of their desires, choices and decisions.
It will be this consideration of the architecture like a cultural representation1 linked to the construction and representation
of a condition of own and specificity humanity, which will allow us not only the conservation and reinvention of a feeling
of belonging and the built of a new sense of domesticity, but also from an the identitary point of view because the
affectivity will can be considerate the fundamental concept for the creation of imaginative spontaneous mechanisms able
not only to allow the integration and the symbolic intermediation with other diverse individualities, but also to define and
protect a specificity, an concrete way of "knowing" and "recognizing" in the new global scale of the Net-City.
From this point of view that the figure of the architect (and of the architecture) will turn in fundamentally. Not only as
manager or planner of a present to the search of a foreseen and predictable future, but as interpreter and protector, of a
history and a memory turned into "way" (I specify and only) of living through a certain place.

ROGERS E.N., Gli elementi del fenomeno architettonico, Marinotti, Milano 2006.

112

MIC _ My Ideal City

In the following reflection we will try to develop this key idea that will allow us to understand the territory as the result of
an affective process of "internal" evolution (J. Portugali) link to the individual capacity of the persons to made became a
territory, HIS territory, and not only recognizing it as part of a collective memory and a shared history, but also as result
of a constant transformation in the time based on the imagination and the invention of this population.

2. Inventive and creativity: From the form to the norm

We have to create cities for free and alive men, that is to say capable of being diverse. The
heart of the city is the maxim expression of this quality, must be therefore the place where the
freedom is explained and perfected.
Rogers E. N., Lesperienza dellarchitettura, Skira, Ginevra-Milano 1997
There is no Country which has not been socked for this renovation. Fruit of the calculation,
which is universal, and of a new conscience borns during the first century of the industrial age, this
urbanism and this architecture spread in the whole world possess common features. Some years of
expansion will be sufficient in order that made appear spontaneously the local characters imposed by
the climate and the customs of life
Le Corbusier., Maniera di pensare lurbanistica, Laterza, Bari 2004

We will divide therefore of taking again the idea already expressed by authors as E. N. Rogers, F. Choay or R. Venturi
referred to the Utopian and authoritarian character of the urban projects proposed by the modern movement and of his
nefatas consequences in the planning and the urban current project, to propose a major humanization of the
architectural process promoting strategies of resistance to the global standardization thanks to the participation in the
capture of decisions, the action and comparison of individual consciences across the exigency of a major freedom of
choice and of the consideration of the difference as sign of identity, fundamental in the construction of a space, natural
and social (a context) shared that allows the foundation of a local common heritage2.
These concepts, linked to the importance of the symbolic aspect of the architecture, will allow us to pass from the study
of a more popular and vernacular interpretation of the architectural project carried out for R. Venturi to the study of the
importance of big cities peripheries (as an example of the capacity of the populations to take necessary decisions to
define its own space across the use of decorative elements and formal very common rules) for the research of symbolic
elements and rule of design. More remote, isolated and forgotten zones i.e. not urban areas which never contain intact
the spatial premises able to start an urban metabolic sustainable development, will guarantee the conservation of the
character and the local specificity of a place, in the time.
Capacity, through the individual action to modify the general context, which will be understood therefore as a real index
of diversity and which will recognize the existence of a semiotic wealth giving us the possibility of measuring the
existence in a neighborhood of a "feeling of belonging and of appropriation" depending on the free modifications realized
on the "architectural original morfotypes" and which have formed this neighborhood along the history. Analysis and
knowledge of the urban phenotypes arisen from an original genotype that will allow us to locate in addition the most
propitious zones where to project strategies of collaboration and civil participation.

CHOAY, F., Le patrimoine en question anthologie puor un combat, articolo non pubblicato.

113

MIC _ My Ideal City

Creative mechanisms of project process generators of" self-organization, which they would allow to create an
architecture as the people wants it, but also as the architect it has decided about the search of a collective memory.
Creation through the architecture of a series of composite and geometric rules, which in hands of a population, they
would provoke a morphologic / functional renovation able to turn into a cultural synthesis and representation of a chosen
identity.
There would be allowed this way the transformation of the old "authoritarian" premise promoted by the modern
movement (from the norm to the form), allowing the step a version more democratic and participative, able to create from
the study of certain historical existing forms (through its formal, spatial and environmental characteristics), the
construction of a new architectural and urban composite norm.

3. The example of the Gallineras neighborhood and the Bay of Cadiz Natural Reserve. The
natural and rural areas as contemporary generators of social affective synergies
Once in Seville, in the past, who wants make construct a house said to the architect or
simply to the bricklayer which was the dimension of the court and and then ask to obtaining about the
rooms that were possible. Also this case for me is connected with the problem of the freedom and the
imagination, because the things to fix are small but cannot be been wrong, these are the last sense of
the construction.
Rossi A., Autobiografia scientifica, Il Saggiatore, Milano 2009
The generalizations serve to confirm the right of the new ideas to the life, these will never
drive to the invention or to the discovery of new goings. The process is the inverse one, the life is
done of spontaneous inventions ()
Le Corbusier, Maniera di pensare lurbanistica, Laterza, Bari 2004

To understand clearly the concepts previously developed I will briefly describe a practical example of a best practice in
landscape design, which highlight the importance of rural and natural areas to recover the specific identity and the
local character of any site: Gallineras Neighborhood (San Fernando Andalusia, Spain) case.
The present case of study will represent an example of design focused to demonstrate the importance of the Natural
Reserve of Bay of Cdiz as a source of opportunities for the regeneration and reactivation of the territory (in ecological,
cultural, historic, technological, social and economic terms). The natural reserve is a natural element able to originate
and strengthen the structure of urban identity and the internal codes of the chronological mutation and adaptation
process which generates economic and social affective synergies. The defense of existing values is therefore
guaranteed and alternative renovation processes are set up to improve degenerated environments.
The Gallineras neighborhood is also important because is part of San Fernandos eastern suburban area, i.e. a city
district that represents a precise definition of the main vulnerabilities of Cadizs metropolitan area - such as lack of
employment, drug traffic, citizen insecurity. For this reason the present case study is also focalized in the reinforcement
of inhabitants local identity and sense of belonging. Such approach could create new alternatives for the big works
architectures, which are usually globally oriented and unrelated to their context: its an effort to understand the Natural
Reserve of Baha de Cdiz as a landscaping element from a natural, geographical and historical point of view, and not
as it is considered today simply as an obstacle for moving from one urban center to another. It should indeed be
114

MIC _ My Ideal City

designed as the central space that links and unifies all the particularities of Cadiz Bay territory. This new point of view
would allow people of Cadiz to consider the Natural Reserve as a space full of opportunities to generate a real
sustainable development from an indentitary point of view and a container of rules of design, images and architectural
form able to define the character and specificity of the context.
At the time of study morphological and historical characteristics between this urban area and the natural reserve, I could
find a fundamental relation between the geometrical dimension and relation of the actual houses of the Gallineras
neighborhood and the original houses linked with the agricultural use localized in the natural area. After a conscientious
analysis I get to synthesize them in a little quantity of geometrical rules and decorative elements.

Figure 1. Morphological and historical characteristics between the urban area and the natural reserve. Doctoral Thesis. Angel L. Gonzalez Morales

115

MIC _ My Ideal City

The main idea of this project was to turn this morphological rules into an urban normative, permitting the freedom of its
use in hands of the inhabitants, and returning to them the roll of generators of necessary transformations for the
development of their neighborhood. The application of a series of simple rules of design through its recombination and
continued mutation will allow a renovation and constant environmental evolution of the context depending on the desires
and needs of the community which live there. After the projects development its possible to affirm that this process
guarantee the conservation and reinvention in time of a sentimental relation between citizens and the environment
(natural and urban areas) where they live and provide that they will form part of their own biography and daily
experience, of their memory and their imagination, result of the sum of affection and creativity.

Figure 2. Project Proposal or the development of the Gallineras neighborhood. Doctoral Thesis. Angel L. Gonzalez Morales

116

MIC _ My Ideal City

Informational cities as urban centers of the knowledge era

Sviatlana Khveshchanka, Heinrich-Heine-University Dsseldorf
Agnes Mainka, Heinrich-Heine-University Dsseldorf

1. Introduction
Just as there are typical cities of the industrial society (such as Manchester in the 19th and early 20th century) and the
service society (e.g. New Yorks Manhattan of the late 20th century), so there exist or will exist in future typical cities of
the knowledge society. Following Manuel Castells (1989), we will call such cities informational cities (Yigitcanlar, 2010).
When Castells published his book on such cities in 1989, he could not have known how existing informational cities
would look like (since the internet had not happened yet at the time), but the theoretical foundation for dealing
scientifically with informational cities had been laid. Such a city includes a cognitive infrastructure which is based on the
infrastructure of information and communication technology (ICT) and consists of a knowledge infrastructure with regard
to scientific knowledge and the institutions thereof (Carillo, 2006), as well as a creative infrastructure with regard to
copyright-based industries or a creative economy (Florida, 2005). Referred to Castells space of flows builds the
main infrastructures in informational cities. This concerns both the ICT infrastructure and the cognitive infrastructure.
Today, we have informational cities in front of our eyes: Singapore, Seoul and Dubai set themselves the explicit goal of
creating such cities (and are very far along the way); London, New York, San Francisco (and environs) and Shanghai
predominantly bank on high-tech industry and services and are modifying their regions into informational cities. Todayat
the beginning of the 21st centurywe can use Castells theory to analyze this development.
The aim of this article is to develop a theoretical framework that allows quantifying the degree of informativeness of a
city. We work with a framework of six groups of indicators:

Infrastructures (ICT infrastructure and cognitive infrastructure as groundwork for knowledge cities and creative
cities),

Position in the world city hierarchy,

Structure of the labor market (including analysis of job polarization),

Mix of companies,

Political willingness to establish an informational city,

Weak location factors (e.g., leisure facilities, shopping malls).

In this article, we give a brief overview how the indicators of informational cities could be measured, using mainly the
example of Singapore.

117

MIC _ My Ideal City

An informational city is deeply ingrained in the information and knowledge society. On information markets (Linde and
Stock, 2011), it can be observed that the development of standards follows principles of network economics (Shapiro
and Varian, 1998). After a combat zone, in which several candidates for the future standard meet and do battle, one of
the candidates reaches the critical mass of users and become the market leader, whereas his competitors lose market
share and, in the best case, are still able to service niche markets. The successful candidate gains new customers
purely on the strength of the market power he has acquired thus far, improves his offer, which attracts more customers,
etc. In cybernetics, this principle is characterized as a positive feedback loop, it is said that success breeds success.
The many iterations of the loop result in the establishment of one single standard (the winner takes it all) for one
(technological, economic, regional) area; this does not have to be the best of all solutionsit is, rather, the solution that
was able to convince the most customers. Does this principle of network economics also hold for the development of
informational cities? If so, the result would be, from a global perspective, one single informational world city, or between
one and a select few per world region. Those informational cities become new centers of power. It is possible that other
cities and regions fall into economic irrelevance and become economic deadlands.
This article is a part of a research program on informational cities at the Department of Information Science at the
Heinrich-Heine-University of Dsseldorf. The state of the art of our research consists of theoretical foundations of
informational cities research (Stock, 2011a, 2011b, 2011c) and of first empirical results about job polarization in
informational cities (Dornstdter et al., 2011), about informational world cities (Nowag et al., 2011) and about Singapore
as a case study (Khveshchanka et al., 2011).

2. Infrastructures
ICT infrastructure
The predominant infrastructure of informational cities is its telecommunication network, which connects workplaces and
private households with one another. The ICT infrastructure of a city is mainly based on telephony, broadband networks
and the internet, forming the basis of the way these technologies are used in private households, in the economy as well
as in governmental institutions. Telephony is described via landline, mobile network and VoIP (Voice over Internet
Protocol). Broadband networking involves fast data nets such as the currently growing use of VDSL. The indicator
bundle for the internet registers internet hosts, computer density (number and penetration of computers), internet
connections (households and companies with internet access) as well as internet users. We can expect an informational
city to provide (wireless) internet access at any place in the municipal area, either for residents only or for everyone. For
Singapore we can use the Networked Readiness Index, which also uses indicators of the ICT infrastructure to measure
the development degree of a nation. Singapore was always ranked in the top ten in the last ten years and in 2009 as
second behind Sweden (Dornstdter et al., 2011).

Cognitive infrastructure
The cognitive infrastructure of an informational city cannot be described and measured via hard facts, like its ICT
infrastructure, but rather concerns soft location factorswhich are, however, of central importance for informational
cities. Two types of cognitive activity are essential for the informational city:

Scientific-technical-medical (STM) activities and the results thereof (knowledge city),

118

MIC _ My Ideal City

Creative-artistic activities and the results thereof (creative city).

A knowledge city is a city that aims at a knowledge-based development, by encouraging the continuous creation,
sharing, evaluation, renewal and update of knowledge (Ergazakis et al., 2004, p. 7). Examples of successful knowledge
cities are Munich, Dublin, Barcelona, Stockholm, Montreal and Delft (Ergazakis et al., 2006). The significance of a
knowledge hub can be measured both via the numbers of successful graduates and via the extent and effect of their
STM publications. For the latter, some parameters like number of citations in the Science Citation Index or in the World
Patents Index may be useful. Two indicators for this are known in scientometrics:

Scientific-technical performance: number of publications (articles and patents granted),

Scientific-technical impact: citations of these publications.

According to the data in Web of Science, Singapores publication output is characterized by a continuous growth over
the last ten years. In this respect, the highest increase can be observed in 2008. For the year 2007, Haustein et al.
(2011) found out, that in terms of visibility Singapore performed as the second-best Asia-Pacific country behind Australia
with eight out of twelve field-specific citation rates above world average.
Informational cities do not restrict themselves to STM knowledge, but also attract creatives and creative industries. The
latter distinguish themselves via the individual creativity of employees, their abilities and talents. Baum et al. (2009, p.
48) name six industries that form the core of the creative city: (1) film, television, entertainment, (2) authors, publishers,
print media, (3) composers, music production, (4) architecture, visual arts, design, (5) advertising, marketing, (6)
performing arts. Apart from the core professions of the creative class, there are points of contact with the typical
professions of the knowledge city.
In Singapore, the development of the creative industries is guided by the Creative Industries Development Strategy.
According to this concept, the city has to build up a vibrant and sustainable creative cluster in order to contribute to
Singapores economy. Moreover, the GDP contribution of the creative cluster should increase from 3.2 percent in 2005
to 6 percent in 2012 (Yim, 2009, p. 3).

3. Position in the world city hierarchy

World city research arises with the fundamental work The World City Hypothesis by Friedmann (1986). It concerns the
placement of a city in the world economy. (W)orld Cities are large, urbanized regions that are defined by dense patterns
of interactions rather than by political-administrative boundaries (Friedmann, 1995, p. 23).
World cities form a hierarchical system according to their respective significance (measured, for instance, by the capital
that a city is able to attract and bind to itself). Like Sassen (2001), Friedmann (1995) also regards New York, London
and Tokyo as the leaders in this category for the last decade of the 20th century. On the second tier, we can see cities
that may not dominate the entire world, but still have significance beyond national borders. Examples stated include
Miami, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Randstad and Singapore (Friedmann, 1995).
Following Sassen (2001), companies acting worldwide have their main headquarters in a global city. To register the
information streams between cities, one can count all connections of companies from that city (no matter whether they
have headquarters or only a branch) to its respective branches as well as to steady suppliers and customers as an

119

MIC _ My Ideal City

indicator for economic informational connectivity. A second indicator is the STM connectivity, which can be captured by
counting co-authorships or co-citations on city level (Nowag et al., 2011).
According to the Fortune 500 companies, we can find 55 branches and 2 headquarters of these firms in Singapore. In
2009, Singapore has quantitatively important co-authorships with 96 countries mainly with South East Asia and Australia
(Nowag et al., 2011).

4. Labor market and job polarization

The current economic development has repercussions on income and jobs, which are characterized as income and job
polarization, respectively (Goos and Manning, 2007). Income polarization means that the difference in income between
the rich and the poor increases, whereas the area in between rich and poor loses in significance. Income polarization
says nothing about any changes to specific professions. This is only accomplished by the conception of job polarization.
For the workers, then, there remain the tasks that have not been automatized, and these are divided into manual (e.g.
cleaning) and analytic (e.g. research and development) and interactive labor (e.g. management). The labor market in
developed societies is split into well-paid (and well-trained) workers and (very) badly paid workers with limited
qualifications employees in the middle segment of education and income will, tendentially, disappear, due to the
increasing automatization of their former activities.
Based on statistical information about manpower, personal income and occupational category, ten job groups are
categorized with regard to the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-88). The lowest income can be
observed in the first job group (Cleaners, Laborers and Related Workers). In contrast, the last job group (Managers and
Administrators) has the highest salary. The changes of Singapores labor market from 1999 to 2009 show a strong
increase in high skilled job groups and as proposed a decrease in the middle (Dornstdter et al., 2011). Jobs in the first
category are manly performed by foreign workers which are not allowed to stay in Singapore after finishing their projects.
About 5 percent of Singapore's labor force conducts jobs in the information and communications industries (Dornstdter
et al., 2011).

5. Mix of companies
There are four types of companies in particular who have their headquarters here. First and foremost, capital-intensive
service providers (as part of advanced producer services APS; (Sassen, 2001)) have their head offices in the global
informational cities. The space of flow, in this case, is represented by the international stream of capital; participating
branches are stock exchanges, banks and insurance companies. In informational cities, too, there is some industry, but
those companies concentrate on knowledge-intensive high-tech industries, such as the medical, pharmacological,
chemical and agrarian industry. The third type includes the information economy, to which belong industries such as
computer manufacturing, software development, telecommunication, internet firms as well as information service
companies. As a fourth pillar of companies, we will list creative enterprises, which either assist the aforementioned
companies (e.g. advertising agencies) or provide cultural facilities (museums, theaters etc.).
In 2009, the mix of companies in Singapore was dominated by wholesale and retail trade (27.5 percent of all companies
by industry). The knowledge-intensive enterprises in particular sectors (infocomm, financial, insurance sector and firms
120

MIC _ My Ideal City

with professional, scientific and technical activities) came next. The prevailing number (47.2 percent) of all knowledgeintensive enterprises operated in scientific, professional and technical activities (Khveshchanka et al., 2011).

6. Political willingness
In many growing informational cities, there have been or are political programs to build necessary infrastructures and to
coordinate the way towards them. Communal programs for the creative city are downright inflationary (the role model
being London Creative).
In Singapore exists a lot of political programs and government authorities, who develop master plans for different spaces
of informational city needs. To enhance the ICT infrastructure the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore
(Khveshchanka et al., 2011) created a master plan Intelligent Nation 2015 (iN2015) to push the society to a knowledge
society by increasing the high speed broadband connection and by offering a free wireless access for citizens. We also
find an increase in e-governance activities, in where business and citizens are able to participate with the government.

7. Weak location factors

For Hall (1997), it is a mark of global cities to attract many foreign visitors. Here the following cultural institutions play a
role: museums, galleries, libraries, opera houses, music halls, theaters and the number of events in any given week.
Casinos, too, draw visitors. Furthermore, large sporting events with supraregional importance are significant. A typical
customer of an informational citys leisure facilities is the cultural omnivore (Peterson et al., 1996). In an informational
city such as London, one can, at the same time, be a supporter of Arsenal F.C. and a regular visitor to the British Library,
go to the opera or see a musical or a rock concert.
Singapore offers in 2010 22 libraries, 52 museums, 7 zoos, 2 casinos, 122 shopping-malls as well as 7.807 art and
culture events (Khveshchanka et al., 2011). Examples for large events are the Formula One Singapore Grand Prix or the
Youth Olympic Games in 2010.

8. Conclusion
In this paper, we presented some of our identified indicators for measuring the degree of infomativeness of a city by
demonstrating examples of Singapore as a case study. The next steps of our research will broaden the perspective to
other candidates of informational cities (e.g. London, Munich, Stockholm, New York City, San Francisco and the Bay
Area, So Paulo, Shanghai, Seoul and Tokyo) and adjust the framework of indicators.

121

MIC _ My Ideal City

References
BAUM S., OCONNOR K., AND YIGITCANLAR T., The implications of creative industries for regional outcomes, in
International Journal of Foresight and Innovation Policy 5(1-3), 44-64, 2009.
CARILLO F.J. (ed.), Knowledge Cities. Approaches, experiences, and perspectives, Butterworth Heinemann, New York,
NY 2006.
CASTELLS M., The informational city. Information technology, economic restructuring, and the urban-regional process,
Basil Blackwell, Oxford, UK, Cambridge, MA 1989.
DORNSTDTER R., FINKELMEYER S., AND SHANMUGANATHAN N., Job-Polarisierung in informationellen Stdten,
in Information Wissenschaft und Praxis 62(2-3), 95-102, 2011.
ERGAZAKIS E., METAXIOTIS K., AND PSARRAS, J., Towards knowledge cities. Conceptual analysis and success
stories, in Journal of Knowledge Management 8(5), 5-15, 2004.
ERGAZAKIS E., METAXIOTIS K., AND PSARRAS, J., An emerging pattern of successful knowledge cities main
features, in CARILLO F.J. (ed.), Knowledge Cities. Approaches, experiences, and perspectives (pp. 3-17), Butterworth
Heinemann, New York, NY 2006.
FLORIDA R.L., Cities and the creative class, Routledge: New York, NY, London, UK 2005.
FRIEDMANN J., The world city hypothesis, in Development and Change 17, 69-83, 1986.
FRIEDMANN J., Where we stand. A decade of world city research, in KNOX P., AND TAYLOR P. (eds.), World Cities
in a World-System (pp. 21-47), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, New York, NY 1995.
GOOS M., AND MANNING A., Lousy and lovely jobs. The rising polarization of jobs in Britain, in Review of Economics
and Statistics 89(1), 118-133, 2007.
HALL P., Modelling the post-industrial city, in Futures 29(4/5), 311-322, 1997.
HAUSTEIN S., TUNGER D., HEINRICHS G., AND BAELZ G., Reasons for and developments in international scientific
collaboration. Does an Asia-Pacific research area exist from a bibliometric point of view?, in Scientometrics 86(3),
727-746, 2011.
KHVESHCHANKA S., MAINKA A., AND PETERS, I., Singapur. Prototyp einer informationellen Stadt, in Information
Wissenschaft und Praxis 62(2-3), 111-121, 2011.
LINDE F., AND STOCK, W.G., Information markets, De Gruyter Saur, Berlin, Germany 2011.
NOWAG B., PEREZ M., AND STUCKMANN M., Informationelle Weltstdte. Indikatoren zur Stellung von Stdten im
"Space of Flow", in Information Wissenschaft und Praxis 62(2-3), 103-109, 2011.
PETERSON R.A., AND KERN R.M., Changing highbrow taste. From snob to omnivore, in American Sociological
Review 61, 900-907, 1996.
SASSEN S., The global city. New York, London, Tokyo (2nd ed.), Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ 2001.
SHAPIRO C., AND VARIAN H.R., Information rules, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA 1998.
STOCK W.G., Informational cities. Analysis and construction of cities in the knowledge society, in Journal of the
American Society for Information Science and Technology 62(5), 963-986, 2011a.
STOCK W.G., Informationelle Stdte und Informationswissenschaft, in Information Wissenschaft und Praxis 62(2-3),
65-67, 2011b.
STOCK W.G., Informationelle Stdte im 21. Jahrhundert, in Information Wissenschaft und Praxis 62(2-3), 71-94,
2011c.
YIGITCANLAR T., Informational city, in HUTCHISON R. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Urban Studies (Vol. 1, pp. 392-395),
Sage, New York, NY 2010.
YIM, E., Sector report: Creative and media Singapore, UK Trade & Investment, Singapore 2009.

122

MIC _ My Ideal City

Organized Networks and the image of the European archipelago

Towards a new geopolitical scenario and its relevance in the perception of the built environment
Raffaele P, Politecnico di Milano

1. Introduction
1.1 Overview
Aim of this essay is the exploration of the potential of the engagement of organized networks for the development of
interactive design strategies and governance practice for architecture and urban planning, within the framework of the
current archipelago of cities and urban regions in Europe. The spread of organized networks made possible by
information and communication technologies have resulted in new models of sociality that creates emergent institutional
forms within the legal framework of an established political power. These self-organized systems are in fact more flexible
and efficient because of their adaptability to the aspirations and the needs of individuals or groups of individuals in
spontaneous relationship. Organized networks are identified by the institutions as NGOs and they are able to produce
political consensus and purchasing power1, building their activities on bottom-up principles such as participation and
shared actions.
These informational societies materialize their presence influencing the transformation of the physical space, especially
in those places where the institutional control is weaker and less restrictive, where the private property can be more
easily re-conceived as shared environment. Such a fuzzy and diffused practicality (Branzi, 2006) raises the problem of
the interpretation of the built environment with different values from the ones used for its foundation, in order to redefine
dismissed areas and unused buildings as loose spaces, open to re-programming and to manipulative operations: the
space available. In a fragmented scenario of sensible urban spaces, a new political balance is emerging in Europe,
along with the development of a geography of the dispersal of marginal areas that becomes of great interest for the
development of new territories and spatial practices. There is then a need for a disclosure of a new sense of affiliation
and to study different modes of sustainable appropriation of such places defined by Castells spaces of flow or spaces
of places, even through the employment of specific architectonic forms of communication, open relational structures
between designer, user and site that re-activate a place engaging with its topologic and topographic characters.

1 For instance the Italian network Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale GAS implements the buy and sell of biological and local goods through the internet in
the whole Country. Such activity has been defined by the government non commercial with Legge Finanziaria 2007, which means that this
business is not subjected to any taxation regime.

123

MIC _ My Ideal City

1.2 Organized Networks

Organized networks refer to the network models of sociality nowadays originated by the spread of various kind of
information and communication technologies (ICTs). Ned Rossiter has defined them as loose affiliations where
participants have the freedom to come and go (Rossiter, 2006, p. 22). The contribution of the society in the construction
of such networks allow a free exchange of information and knowledge between the contributors and across all the
people who wants to connect with the network itself. It is in a way an expression of governance that rely on selforganization and adaptability as elemental forces. Informal and distributed examples of these network systems are the
Open Source Intelligence, research networks, collective blogs, open publishing, mailing lists, newsgroups, P2Ps (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Strategic Uses Spectrum, by Surman and Reilly, 2003 (Rossiter, 2006, p.76). The table discerns different types of organized networks on
the basis of the quality of the relationships established between the users

In the same way that NGOs in the recent past have been able to consolidate their political power and then their
economic effectiveness through ICTs, organized networks are now affirming themselves as an available starting point for
the production of non-representative democracies. Organized networks are flexible and organic patterns that support an
horizontal expansion of the informational flows. [...] a number of scholars have claimed that a new state form has
emerged, a form that Castells2 has termed the Network-state (p.66). This horizontal and in a sense nonhierarchical exchange between the participants does not require neither a top-down approach nor a bottom-up approach
for the start up of any data transfer because each participant can freely provide and receive information. It is up to them
to select and decide which information they need and if they find them reliable. Through an approach similar to the one
proposed by the Situationist movement during the '60s, organized networks allow everyone who embraces and develops
theoretically and practically the same sharing process to become automatically a member of the system, without the
need of special formalities (Wark, 2008, p. 41).

See Castells major publications on these topics, especially The Informational City (1989).

124

MIC _ My Ideal City

1.3 Openness and Transparency

Rossiter's research on organized networks approaches the term new institutions referring to institutional forms3 rather
than institutions per se. The stress on the idea of form is better explained when he claims that forms are open to the
movement of network and the network of movements. Both are in constant tension with institutionalization []. Since it is
revealed through expression, form holds no relation to formalism [...], stasis and establishment (Rossiter, 2006, p. 38).
The concept of network form is perceived as an organism continuously exchanging instead of a fix and determined
entity. The architecture of these emergent sharing systems promotes principles like openness and transparency as
fundamental quality of the relationship between all the sharers and the shared information.
On the basis of the same principles, a different perspective can be projected onto contemporary urban scenarios,
especially in those cases in which certain built environments or peripheral contexts are perceived as redundant and
neglected4: the necessity to get possession of the physical space for some organized networks appears easier in
situations where the established political control is weaker or less restrictive. If we think about the way some networks
operate, like the international Couch Surfing network or the Italian mutual companies Retenergie, Solare Collettivo, Orti
Urbani, Associazione Esterni5, we can notice how relevant is for them the manipulation of the physical space in places
not directly controlled by public administrations or where collective enforcements can be more difficult to be organized
against the interests of the network. Roofs of private houses, rent and sub-rented flats, abandoned office developments,
scraps of land between gardens and other properties or leftovers of unused agricultural fields are all available areas that,
under the action of digital networks, can achieve the double nature of regenerated urban spaces and interfaces between
the informational flow and the material condition of a place.

2. Sense of belonging, sense of affiliation

2.1 Meta-space and Urban Prototypes
Organized networks interfere with the space of the city extending its material boundaries towards the digital range of the
space of the information flow. Many of the networks mentioned above transform the settings of a place in order to fulfill
the needs of all the users. They exploit an available space as a common physical resource, a shared facility that
interconnects virtual and multiple demands with the material capacity of a specific site. Organized networks give an
systematic order to the users schedule of appropriation, ruling the way they can have access to the site, for what
reasons and for how long.
In this respect, Bunschoten and Choras research on Urban Galleries introduces the concept of meta-spaces as didactic
tool and an open source environment in which new prototypes of public spaces are modeled by potential users

In their [Lenin and Gramscis] time, the party headquarters, the workers association, the factory and the streets were the primary architectonic
form of communication. Today, that also has changed. As such, the ways in which politics becomes organized has also changed. New modes of
communication necessitate new theoretical tools in order to make intelligible and actionable the ongoing force of living labour (Rossiter, 2006,
p.43).
4 Few years after the global economic crisis of 2009, the phenomenon of the dismission of tertiary spaces becomes a pressing emergency. From
Tokyo to London the worlds principal capitals have the opportunity to manipulate and re-conceive regioni desertiche, tecnologicamente attrezzate,
in perfetto stato di manutenzione, ma prive di funzioni (Branzi, 2006, p.30).
5 In order to better understand the nature of such networks it is advisable to visit their websites on-line.
3

125

MIC _ My Ideal City

interweaving the spatial aspirations of society with emerging spatial behaviors and spatial structures: When a part of a
city is designated a meta-space, it becomes an Urban Gallery a fluid form of public space that evolves in time,
generating different definitions of public space and different ways of participating in it. These definitions yield "floors" in
the spatial structure of the urban gallery. Meta-spaces make it possible to bring the dynamic structure of scenarios into
the flows of the second skin. A meta-space in the second skin is a public space, a public matrix (Bunschoten, 2003).
We could argue that organized networks, when they are oriented in modifying and occupying a place, they relates to
material space through meta-spaces, the ambience in which urban prototypes or urban matrix are conceived, awaiting to
be assigned to an actual topographic scenario. The meta-space is an incubator of collective knowledge and information
through which several options of spatial appropriation are mixed together in order to coordinate a dynamic and freechanging environment of innovative urban settings. The result of this process of hybridization is an urban prototype, a
digital model and an expression of the urban potential of a region within the framework of the city.

2.2 The concepts of Platform and Portal in architecture

The Italian association Esterni based in Milan focuses its work on the organization of large scale events in public spaces.
In recent years they have also experimented innovative ways of providing temporary accommodations for the events
users, activating an organized network of hosting families conceived on principles similar to the ones proposed by the
Couch Surfing network. Each family is directly connected to Esternis central hub providing real-time information on their
hosting capabilities for the events organized by the association6.
The aim of the association is to solve a technical issue through a transitional spatial arrangement. The immediacy and
the brevity of the action of transformation of the capacity of a building or of its function make the process of appropriation
a spatial exception, just a provisional measure. But what kind of image of the city do they present to the user of the
network? Quite clearly Esterni promotes an idea of Milan as a welcoming, modern and flexible city, although no major
aesthetic experience is implied within the time of the visit for the countless participants of an event. The massive number
of people involved in Esternis initiatives can become an opportunity for the city to explore and to discover forgotten and
unusual public spaces, they could be an excuse to better understand and to spread the history of the city, some
undisclosed districts, almost with a curatorial and artistic extent. This approach would be able even to enlarge the target
of users, because then the service would interact with the micro-milieu of the local scale of the city, a new and more
authentic genius loci of the epicenters of the city would emerge.
The reference to the terms Platforms and Portals is taken from the lexicon of digital networks and it is used in this
investigation with a tectonic intent. Organized networks are platforms for the collection and the exchange of data. In
particular the ones oriented to the exploitation of places allow the sharing of information relevant to the cognition of
available spaces. Such networks should strive to a deep interaction with the characters of a place, altering not only its
virtual condition of awareness but also its topographic characters, becoming a gate or a portal to access both the
entities of a project. Organized networks with a spatial interests towards the city should grasp a sense of affiliation to a
place, almost a political participation to the future development of the area converting its status from oblivion to reaction, from non-places to urban prototypes.
For more information see (Inti, 2007, pp. 202-203). Other examples of similar initiatives are described in the article, i.e. Taiz and Milano Film
Festival.

126

MIC _ My Ideal City

3. Operations of trans-spatialization
3.1 Situ-ology as experimental practice of representation
The concepts related to the use of an experimental behaviour in artistic researches advertised by the participants to the
International Situationniste in 1958 constitutes the core of principles applied to the production of Situations. According
to Asger Jorn, the situation is not just a political and aesthetic move, it is also a geometric one. [] It is a spatialtemporal work alien to the old properties of art (Wark, 2008, p. 16). The anti-organization acknowledged as
Situationism, born between France and Italy at the end of the '50s, conceived Situology as an experimental practice of
representation based on the branch of geometry called Topology. Situology is founded not only on aesthetic and
political grounds, but also on geometrical ones. [Such practice encompasses] both spatial and temporal aspects of form,
but it is still interested in the unitary properties of form-in-time (p. 17). The knot for example is an interesting shape to
study under this investigation, as it represents both a finite form and the process of tangling. The object reveals its
dynamics of formation. It provokes a situation through its intrinsic properties. The knot itself is an ongoing network and a
perpetual exchanging platform both for incoming information and outputs.
The main products of the number of inventors and artists related to the International Situationniste range from painting to
architecture, from urbanism to game design, with the only aim of creating a process, a situation where time and forms
collaborate to produce an ambience, a space and time for desire, for the nomad community of the future. The diagram
proposed by Constant for the project New Babylon is relevant to this inquiry for two main reason: first of all because it is
a self-organized form and second it is an architectural translation of a political principle: New Babylon makes literal
Marx's diagram of base and superstructure. Its sectors are literally superstructures, made possible by an infrastructure
below ground where mechanical reproduction has abolished scarcity and freed all of time and from necessity (p. 22).
In the Situationist process of art-making, the machine plays a central role in the diffusion of the products among the
society as well as in approaching new experimental techniques: the machine [is] the central fact of contemporary
creativity. A free art of the future is an art that would master and use all the new conditioning techniques. It offers the
possibility of reconciling quality with equality (p. 24). In this respect the role of the machine can be then translated in a
democratic opportunity for the masses to take part to the production of art and culture in the network era.

3.2 Cascine Milano 2015, Platforms and Protocols

The two projects presented in the following chapters both exemplify an approach to architectural design and urban
planning that uses the ideas of platform and portals as devices for a shared action of transformation of the city of Milan,
focusing on the regeneration of neglected areas and dismantled buildings.
The first project, Cascine Milano 20157, conceived by Stefano Boeri, Multiplicity.lab and supported in its start up by Alta
Scuola Politecnica, has been presented to the municipality of Milan in 2009 and it aims at developing a network of
existing farms within the urban region oriented to the promotion of an historical and architectural heritage (nowadays
almost completely abandoned) through the promotion of refurbishments that involve agriculture, sustainable production
and consumption of food and energy, various models of hospitality and social housing around the peripheral belt of the
Originally called Milan Home Emergencies, it was conceived as a network of Municipi dellAbitare Sostenibile. Presented in 2007 at Triennale
Milano during the exhibition Vita Nuda.

127

MIC _ My Ideal City

city. The project, in its first steps, was informed through surveys on site and direct interviews to the population of their
surroundings and relevant figures from the municipality in order to understand the state of the art of the buildings and to
identify feasible actions of regeneration. The data collected between 2006 and 2009 are now part of an on-line platform
for the sensitization of a wide range of possible stakeholders and the advancement of actual projects and renovation
proposals.
In this case a virtual platform8 has been involved in the project at an advanced stage of analysis and research. The
platform helps architects and developers in finding new design possibilities, announcing competitions and advertising
possible sites of intervention. The platform fosters the awareness of available spaces, giving the opportunity to other
operators to shape the future of the network of farms following a protocol9 of common guidelines.

3.3 Landscape as topographic device, Platforms and Portals

The second project presented in this research was developed in 2009 at Laboratorio Misura e Scala, DiAP, Politecnico di
Milano, with Paolo Patelli and Zeno Piccoli. The project aims at inscribing new urban forms within the city region through
the topographic extent of landscape. Through the exploitation of indicators of urban sensitivity10, a strategic plan of
intervention has been defined within the peripheral region included between Rogoredo and Chiaravalle, Milan, SouthEast.
The phase of analysis detected a number of emergencies derived from social, economic and environmental issues,
which then have played the role of organizational influences, almost morphological and syntactical pressures for the
transformation of this undeveloped and neglected region. The analytic process collected a set of numerical data using
several sources available on-line: Atlante Statistico Italia 2001, Linee origine/destinazione_Lombardia_2004,
Destinazione d'Uso dei Suoli Agricoli e Forestali (DUSAF). The data have been visualized through ArcGIS in density
maps which have been then combined with a software created in Processing for the construction of five synthetic
indicators of urban sensitivity, urban unconscious, rural neglect, suburban disruption, biological break down,
technological removed (Fig. 2).

See http://www.cascinemilano2015.org/
See Burkes paragraph Towards a Protocological Architecture: Protocols both define environments and offer a potential new suite of creative
methods through which architecture may respond to [] a decentered and deteriirorializing apparatus of rule that manages hybrid identities, flexible
hierarchies and plural exchanges through modulating network of command, (2007, pp. 71-75).
10 See ESPON, European spatial planning network and the definition of Urban Sensitivity Indicators.
8
9

128

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 2. Data processing. The board shows how the strategic plan of intervention in the quadrant between Rogoredo and Chiaravalle has been
shaped through the analysis and the manipulation of numeric data translated into density maps with ArchGIS. In the second half of the drawing a
suite of programmatic relationships are established between emergent spatial tendencies and available spaces

In this case the use of a series of data collected onto external platforms, then incorporated in a topographic-topological
process of manipulation, has been conceived as strategic approach to re-produce an organic continuity between all the
agents that cause the actual morphology of the place (society, ecosystems, economy, culture etc.). In this way the
project becomes a portal, in the sense that interconnects data and topography to inform a topological transformation of
the land without stating initial protocols of actions, but deducing them from an accurate spectrography of the current
condition of the landscape itself.

3.4 Conclusions
The potential of organized networks for architectural and urban planning issues emerges in those cases in which
networks are oriented to the appropriation and the transformation (provisional or permanent) of a physical place.
Openness, flexibility and adaptability to morphological and functional reform are the main characteristics that a
129

MIC _ My Ideal City

designated space should have in order to undergo more easily the actions of manipulation for the fulfillment of the needs
of the networks users.
According to Rossiter the invention by the multitudes of new institutional forms, and the persistence of their attendant
practices, is part of a process that exists within a larger and more complex field of critical Internet culture. Such
developments can only occur when the networks are attentive to the technological composition of communications
media as that which consists of social-technical relationships (2006, p.214). From the point of view of an architectural
and urban observatory the possibility to produce new forms of spatial institutions is subjected to the ability of establishing
meaningful relationships between data and topographies that this essay has exemplified as an implementation of urban
prototypes through platforms, portals and protocols.
Finally, if these organized networks will be capable of facilitating the development of their informational nets towards a
political and cultural condition of networks of networks, it will be also possible to strengthen a broader geographical
vision based on an innovative scenario of migratory spatial behaviors and collaborative systems of available spaces
across Europe and other continents.

References
BRANZI A., Modernit debole e diffusa allinizio del XXI secolo, Skira, Milan, 2006.
BUNSHOTEN R., Touching the Second Skin, in Game, Set and Match: No.2: the Architecture of Co-laboratory,
Oostheruis, K., Feireiss L., Episode, Rotterdam, pp.598-611, 2006.
BURKE A., TIERNEY T., Network Practices. New Strategies in Architecture and Design, Princeton Architectural Press,
New York, 2007.
CASTELLS M., The Informational City: Information Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban Regional
Process, Blackwell, Oxford, 1989.
GLEINIGER A., VRACHILIOTIS G., Simulation. Presentation Technique and Cognitive Method, Birkhuser, Basel, 2008.
INTI I., Sofa Surfing, in Milano. Cronache dellabitare, Multiplicity.lab, Bruno Mondadori, Milan, pp.202-203, 2007.
ROSSITER N., Organized Networks, Media Theory, Creative Labour, New Institutions, NAi, Rotterdam, 2006.
SHIRKY C., The political power of social media. In: Foreign Affairs, Jan-Feb 2011, pp. 28-41, CFR, Tampa, Canada,
2011.
WARK M., 50 years of recuperation of the Situationist International, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2008.

130

MIC _ My Ideal City

Transcription of Human Dimension from Lynch to our days. Meaning,

history and theories, models, tools, representations and perspectives
Salvino Arturo Pozzi, Department of Design Culture, Second University of Naples

If we managed one day to create an ideal environment, we will overcome all the conflicts that split us up.
Verne

Introduction
After several failures of urban planning resulting from a partial utopian vision of reality, today we are ready to face some
great issues of contemporary cities, such as the socio-architectural ones, that is isolation and identity loss of urban
outskirts or gradual desertification of historical centres. Nowadays, theories, models and tools have developed enough to
evaluate and analyse the relationship between man and his vital environment.
Relationships, identity, little communicative worlds of micro-communities, perceptive filters, cognitive maps, behavioural
automatisms, emotional shades and much more cant be neglected any longer.
Today, we need to start again analysing places and micro-places with the tools of social and cognitive sciences in order
to plan an urban change taking into account not only the needs and wishes of small communities (Lucien Kroll, 1999),
but also more objective and measurable biotic factors (perceptions, emotions, behaviours, etc).
The Gestalt theory, Hall and his proxemics and Lynch with the first experiments on cognitive maps, have taught us
that we inhabitants are main characters, inseparable from our settings, from our vital scenes
The philosopher Aldo Masullo, referring to Heidegger, warns us that the environment cant be seen only as a spatial
reality and human being only as a part of it, that is the one as the container and the other as the contents, but as
aspects of a single dynamic reality.
This holistic approach must be used by the analyst drawer1, that is the designer, the one who is used to managing the
complexity and who will necessarily face the analysis and management of dynamic data, outlining new meta-projects
after transcribing into signifiers the human dimension hidden among stones. The analyst will deal with a correct
transcription, in the meaning of a representation of the signs of a specific language by means of the signs of an
alphabet that doesnt belong to it in a new ethic dimension of our Design which will show new golden codes, dynamic,
variable, biotic and inevitably not absolute or universal, belonging to contemporary humanity that lives, suffers and
rejoices, but still too much in the shade of the stones of its city.

Taken from the introduction by R. de Rubertis and others La citt rimossa (2002).

131

MIC _ My Ideal City

History, theories, models, tools

We cant deal with the transcription of the Human dimension without referring to the processes which led to it and gave
it a sense.
The transcription into signs of the relationships existing between the man-actor and his environment is only the final
stage, the main layout for the evaluation of the data and a part of a meta-project process.

Meta-project model worked out in the PhD thesis Survey and representation of ethologic analysis carried out on the actors in a square of the
historical centre of Aversa (2006)S. A Pozzi, tutor prof.O Zerlenga. The present version was presented in 2007 at a seminar at the L.Boltzmann
Institute for Urban Ethology in Wien

Since the 50s all disciplines dealing with the analysis of the perceptive-cognitive-affective-emotive and behavioural
dimension of urban places, aiming at redesigning the same spaces or designing new ones, had a common denominator
beyond any ideological difference.
In 1912 in Germany the Gestaltpsycologie laid the foundations for the understanding of perception and its laws and can
be considered as the common denominator for all the disciplines dealing with social-cognitive and behavioural issues.
With Lynch and his work Limmagine della citt(1960), influenced by Gestalt theories, we discover a new shape of the
city, an image that can be mapped as it is impressed in the memory of its inhabitants.
From the visual dimension to the kinaesthetic, thermic and olfactory one and then Hall with his Dimensione
nascosta(1966) is among the first who help us understand how much the knowledge of the multidimensionality of
spaces and its appropriate use in planning can improve the life of men soothing some aspects like aggressiveness.
But among the different theories in the field of human, social and cognitive sciences, human ethology and specifically
urban ethology gives us the most refined analysis tools.
Human ethology of Lorenz and Eiblsfeldt, that is Urban Ethology makses reference today also to recent theories with
evolutionist background (see the Savannah Theory and the Prospect and Refuge Theory) and to computer science,
thanks to the work of prof. Karl Grammer, anthropologist, expert of computers and director of the Institute for Urban
Ethology L. Boltzmann in Wien.

132

MIC _ My Ideal City

Urban ethology is a punctual science in the meaning that it studies and analyses in a small scale perception and
behaviour through direct observation, while communication and emotions through movies and software, desires and
habits through interviews or introspections, both in outdoor and indoor spaces.
The observation of behaviours, a basic methodology for ethology, can be carried out using a simple note book or a palm
computer called PSION, especially designed and realized to record behavioural modules linked to a fixed alpha numeric
code.

Palm computer PSION

After analysing and comparing results, using the statistiscs program SPSS, it is possible to go back to the initial
questions and draw the final conclusions relative to each single research.
Praat software can be used to analyse and note down sounds, that is verbal communication, thus obtaining the graphs
with durations and frequencies.
With Anvil, it is possible to note down and analyse non verbal communication and all the possible combinations.
Finally, the matrices are obtained to compare numerical data given by more than one operator; this calculation is called
reliability.
Another interesting software, designed by professor Karl Grammer, is E-Motion which elaborates and classifies emotions
through the movements of the filmed actors.

Examples of Transcription of the human dimension

The Survey is here meant as analysis of a systemic objective reality, whether material or immaterial, made up of
variable or constant components, whose data are gathered, processed, evaluated and represented through the use of
reference models.
It is a Representation which almost always needs a sign transcription process from one language into another, especially
when it is concerned with signs belonging to immaterial and symbolic dimensions of the space.
The following images are examples of how man and his life have been represented in relation to a particular
environment. Indices, icons, symbolic images, diagrams, schemes, and other attempts to convey the results of analyses
carried out from different points of view, with different approaches which have tried and are still trying to make the
133

MIC _ My Ideal City

human dimension in relation to its vital space readable. Nowadays, an attempt should be made to unify and organize
these representation codes.

Plan taken from: Burano, un metodo di osservazione per valutare la qualit della vita urbana (middle 70s). From the magazine LArchitettura,
Cronache e Storia, n250-251, anno 1976

Icons and symbols for the Behaviours representation in an urban place. Revision of the early 90s made by prof. V. Andriello taken from Lynch

134

MIC _ My Ideal City

Emotional map of Huddersfield made by Christian Nold using wireless devices worn by volunteers, able to detect the skin galvanic answer.
Published in 2009

Histogram of an analysis of behavioural modules classified first on the basis of an ethogram; coloured stripes show the duration. It is taken from a
study on Pompei carried out in a seminar on the Ethologic Survey held by S. A. Pozzi during the course of Architecture Survey held by prof O.
Zerlenga. The graphic has been realized by a group of students

135

MIC _ My Ideal City

Representation of some of the above mentioned behavioural modules realized by the students of the same course in the same year

Hints for the survey and representation of the male and female subject-actors in an urban context realized by S. A. Pozzi

Remarks and Perspectives

Some brain mapping strategies or neuroimaging are massively used today to investigate and measure the answers to
external stimuli of different nature and are employed for both diagnostic aims and commercial goals in Neuromarketing
(see the spin-off BrainSigns of Universit La Sapienza).
We wonder which are the ethical principles of these experiments which investigate a delicate aspect of our relations with
the environment. If such investigations are carried out for a commercial goal I dont understand the reason why they
cant be employed also to analyse the citizens-users of an urban environment with a strong ethical perspective.
The results, compared with data obtained from direct behavioural analysis made on a sociological and cultural scale, can
contribute to solve social pathologies, such as violence or isolation in urban spaces by defusing the automatisms hidden
like traps in the forest of the socio-behavioural dimension of a city.
We hereby possess today sensitive perceptive maps, which not only can be put on the paper in the manner of Lynch,
but also quantitatively known, by mapping brain responses to certain stimuli.
136

MIC _ My Ideal City

If we have a inner configuration deriving from elaboration processes of stimuli-signals coming from complex activators
which are expression of an external configuration (visual, auditory or implying other senses) made up of shapes, sounds
or other, we can assume that changing this external configuration also the inner one can be modified .
This is only a hypothesis but it can be validated through brain imaging tools like fMRI, the more recent SQUID which
allows the mapping of weak electromagnetic fields and the new Italian discoveries about mirror neurons .
An analyst drawer must not be a neuro-phisiologist, but he will learn how to face this new complexity, accepting the
challenge of an interdisciplinary knowledge and working out transcription codes of a universal language which still keeps
the beauty, the poetry and the talent of the Italian Design.

References
ALEXANDER C., Note sulla sintesi della forma, il Saggiatore, Milano, 1967.
AUG M., Non luoghi, Eleuthera,1993.
DE FUSCO R., Segni, Storia e Progetto dellArchitettura, Laterza, Bari, 1973.
DE RUBERTIS R. (a cura di), La citt rimossa, Ministero dellUniversit e della Ricerca, Officina edizioni, Roma 2002.
DE RUBERTIS R., Il disegno dellarchitettura, Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1994.
DE RUBERTIS R., CLEMENTE M., Percezione e comunicazione visiva dellarchitettura, Officina Edizioni, 2001.
EIBESFELDT I. E., Etologia umana, le basi biologiche e culturali del comportamento, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2001.
LORENZ K., Laltra faccia dello specchio, Adelphi, 1973.
WOLFF W., Lo spazio e il comportamento umano, in LArchitettura-cronache e storia, n. 250-251, 1976.

137

MIC _ My Ideal City

The Interpretation of the Informal City

Fabio Quici, Sapienza Universit di Roma

1.

Metabolism and Heterotopias

In the process of urban transformation, the possibility that exceptions to official policies can become as valid as the rules
themselves, in the case of spontaneous settlements, provide a plausibile interpretation for the understanding of the
informal city.
During the 12th International Biennale Architecture Exhibition in Venice (2010), in the Japanese Pavilion, it was apparent
how the Metabolism concept, adopted by many architects in the Sixties, could still be considered relevant for the cities of
today. A example of Tokyos residential urban landscape (The Metabolizing City) was depicted in a video showing its
transformation over time, as if it was a living organism. This phenomenon, seen in a zenith view, and emphasized with
the acceleration induced by a morphing effect process, showed how Tokyos chaotic landscape does repeatedly
undergoes metabolism based on the inherent, 26-year life cycle of Japanease houses and this is defined by a
combination of houses from several generations1.
The Metabolism of the Sixties was focused on a mechanical concept for the City that, like a machine, can be
metabolized by changing its basic components. Actually, in contemporary Japanese cities, this concept seems to be
replaced with a sort of Void Metabolism, by virtue of the rights conferred to the lands owners as long as they obey
the regulations to built freely any type of structure they want, even with a heavy series of adaptative restructuring,
while retaining the open spaces (the voids).
The outcome of a Japanese city, complied on the basis of this rights guaranteed, appear very different from the cohesive
and compact urban fabrics that make recognizable European cities. It is possible to distinguish in Tokyo a particular form
of heterotopia, a space made by simultaneity, juxtaposition, dispersion and free coexistence that seems to confirm the
idea of the anomalous fabric formulated at the end of Sixties. The heterotopy got the power to juxtapose, in a single
real place, different spaces and different places that are incompatible from each other like theater and cinema as
declaimed in the third principle of etherotopy formulated by Michel Foucault2.
The issue of the juxtaposition that is applied to Japanese city does generate a really theatrical space, because it is
putting up actions and individualities (therefore realities) very different from each other. Instead in the urban sprawl
created from spontaneous human activities widespread all over the world, we find that these informal areas are shaped

Y. Tsukamoto, Escaping the Spiral of Intolerance: Fourth-Generation Houses and Void Metabolism, In K. Kitayama, Y. Tsukamoto, R.
Nishizawa, Tokyo Metabolizing, (Tokyo: TotoPublishing, 2010), p. 29.
2 M. Foucault, Des espaces autres, conference, march 1967. In Eterotopia, Luoghi e non luoghi meropolitani, (Milano: Millepiani, Mimesis, 1994),
pp. 9-21.
1

138

MIC _ My Ideal City

by the claimi of many people about their right to live and to be able to recognize themselves on a stable house, and to
play an active part in its configuration. It is about a urban reality generated by the pursuit of an utopia.
Heterotopias such as Brasilian favelas, South African townships and Colombian viviendas informales are realities dense
of forms and solutions that could provide food for thought useful to architecture, despite still being considered, by most
people, something like heterotopias of deviation, borrowing one more time from the case study formulated by Foucault
places that the society organizes on its edges () rather reserved to single persons whose behaviour is deviant than
the average or standard request3.

2.

The reasons for the informal

When we think of the city, the recurrent model is still the Modernist one, that of a rational organism, defined in its parts
a place where new buildings show an aptitude to abstraction, to an invisible order where the involvement of its
inhabitants is closely linked to technological virtuosity, in the search of surprising and unexpected design solutions. This
is still the model that most part of the designers aspire to and to which they would like to participate because they think
it is able to ensure the free rein of creativity, large investments and maximum visibility of its directors and makers.
However, there is another city, a city that pre-designed templates. This kind of city responds to current needs, and the
complex logics, that are the expression of local requirements rather than global structures. This is a city that is growing
in parallel with the planned and structured policies, but at a dizzying rate, against which common planning and recovery
tools cannot oppose much resistance. This part of the city, which pile up across the territory whatever its topography
and besieging the concentrations of trade and finance, mass tourism and luxury home , remains largely unknown in its
full extent, even if showing all the character evidence in the metropolitan concentrations of Central and South America,
Africa and Asia. We could mention here Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Caracas and Bogot as well as Johannesburg in
South Africa and Mumbai in India.
The results ot these informal settlements appear similar to each other only superficially; in fact, even if they meet the
primary need to give body to a habitable structure, they reflect different requirements corresponding to the different
social structures and cultural heritages. Common expressions in these urban realities unconsciously shared by people
are the extreme articulation and the life blood of the primary need of living (anything but elementar) and the desire to
give form and expression to individuality, and the sense of belonging of the inhabitants to their homes and therefore also
their identification with its formal results.
If I were to describe my experience of Caracas with a single emotion the psychologist Axel Capriles wrote probably
I should cite the dismay; the dismay in the broadest sense of the term, from the thrill facing the unexpected, the accident
or the absurd, to fear or fascination of instability and change. The genius loci of Caracas feeds a particular appetite even
if irregular and itermittent: it summons up the bizarre. The signs of metropolitan development follow the silent commands
from the barrios and even the local city planners jargon reflects the informality of the place: the collective soul of the
people is imbued with a rebuff of the rules and with a strong avversion to law enforcement ()4.

M. Foucault, cit. in Utopie Eterotopie (Napoli: Cronopio, 2006), p. 16.

A. Capriles M., Caracas. I piaceri e le sventure dellinformalit. In Citt. Architettura e societ, Catalogo della 10th Mostra Internazionale di
Architettura di Venezia (Venezia: Marsilio, 2006), p. 107.

3
4

139

MIC _ My Ideal City

These observations, directed to the Venezuelan reality, could perfectly fit in the impressions that lead to the Brazilian
favelas, or even to the huge urban tissue of colombian viviendas informales in Bogot. In all these realities, when the
initial dismay has been overcome and the architect-anthropologist has trained his eye to recognize recurring differences
and constants, we can verify that those spontaneous built-up areas are not the result of a mere refusal of conventional
norms, or the product of a lack of observance of laws. They are, instead, as has been revealed in the analyses of
chaotic phenomena, the manifestation of a higher order which is waiting to be fully understood.
If, by definition, the formal systems are a set of explicit rules developed to regulate social life and to foresee its
development, informality is then a levelling system that provides for the introduction of chaos into order, an adaptative
attitude that accepts the lack of foresight, the surprise and randomness as inevitable and important element of life5.
Looking then to the houses of districts such as Bosa in Bogot, it is possible to recognize in the use of colour and
geometric motifs on the faades, not a mere decoration, but a language that communicates the role of each citizen in the
community and, through changes over time, even its possible economic and social empowement. The same goes for the
metal security fences that characterize the street fronts of the houses whose complexity goes hand in hand with the
social achievement of its owners.
It is a question of decoding a complex language that comes from a social structure based on a balance that new
architecture should respect, instead of imposing its presence to the masses, replacing the informality of the settlements.
When buildings are thought only in terms of quantity and numbers, and without an understanding of the social impact
that the lack of urban space and a typology of standardized serial-house can have on the community, the risk is to
generate waste and violence. In this case the subsequent task of recovery and adaptation of those new buildings may
become even more complex than the regeneration of informal urban tissue.
Significant in this regard is Lucien Krolls point of view against the outcome of the modern residential ideology, made up
of totally planned areas with prefabricated houses, which have had a devastating impact on European populations only
in Eastern Europe, 170 million people are forced to live in 70.000.000 prefabricated housing units now obsolete.
According to Kroll, because the demolition work on these houses is impossible, outrageous, inhumane and desperate,
and the transformation is not feasible because it requires too long, a possible strategy is the reappropriation of the
existing through successive additions, until the old structure is covered up and then allowed to re-grow over the years.
This strategy would reaffirm the state again contemporary popular culture, shared by a multicultural adaptative majority6.

3.

Some experiences

It is said that Christopher Alexander wanted to live for two weeks in a barriada of Lima, before tackling the project of his
proposal for the PREVI consultation, the Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda promoted in 1965 by the Peruvian
president Fernando Belaunde Terry. PREVI can be considered the most interesting and avantgarde experiment for an
alternative social construction of a managed district, which could povide an answer to the barriadas generated from the
unstoppable urban immigration phenomenon that in the mid-sixties already was having the upper hand over the planned
city. Thirteen international architects (among them James Stirling, Charles Correa, Georges Candilis, the Japanese
Ibidem, p. 108.
See the Lucien Kroll project for the refurbishing of Hellersdorf, Berlin (1994).
Cfr. L. Kroll, L. Cavallari, Ecologie urbane (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2001); L. Kroll, Tout est paysage (Paris: Sens et Tonka, 2001).

5
6

140

MIC _ My Ideal City

group of Metabolists, Aldo van Eyck, Knud Svenssons) and as many Peruvians architects were involved in the
development of prototypes for urban homes able to incorporate within themselves all future transformation and
adaptation: each single unit had to contemplate the possibilit of its growing. The neighborhood, partially built in 1974
represent albeit forgotten by official history of architecture a forerunner of current trends within social housing
policies targeted to territories of urban emergency.
An important example of architecture as social action is supported in South Africa by Carin Smuts; it is her conviction
that we must give people an environment where they can be proud of, with funtions and forms to match their
aspirations. Developing a collaborative strategy directly with the population, Carin Smuts has carrried out projects of
social relevance involving people as stakeholders and ensuring that they were also working with active participation on
the site. Using poor local materials such as brick and corrugated sheet-iron which were locally available, including
reuse and involving the local community in the colorful decoration that distinguishes South Africa popular culture, Carin
Smuts has built low cost houses and many public facilities (schools, art centers, multipurpose rooms, rural centers for
meetings) in the poor context of townships.
A similar attitude also characterized, in South Africa, the work of Peter Rich, while some experiences by Noero Wolf and
2610 South Architects offices are focused on adaptative architecture that can be converted over time. The Pelip
Housing project in Port Elizabeth designed by Noero Wolf Architects is oriented to the typical characters of spontaneous
architecture. They also worked on basic habitable modules that can be integrated over time by the residents in the
Motherwell housing scheme.
Starting with a careful study of the microeconomics that usual governs the survival of the poorest, in a proposal for the
Diepsot Reception Area (the largest apartheid township of South Africa located between Johannesburg and Pretoria),
2610 South Architects thought that the characters of informal buildings can change the standard of professional spaces
associated with urban living and reveal new strategies to create a communal space by means of basic attributes that can
contribute to the economical survival of the community. With the development of two different types of settlement, with
particular attention to the urban dimension, the designers have been able to provide two different approaches that can
ensure a possible growing over time and a pluralty of of different possible uses and economies.
With similar attention, in a different context such as Chile, the architecture office Elemental, with their leader Alejandro
Aravena, have developed residential seattlements such as Quinta Monroy in Inique and Lo Espejo in Santiago del Cile.
These are attempts that seek to reconcile at the point of planning an appropriate availability of guaranteed standards
(technological equipment and minimum living spaces) and the possibility of expansion of the residential cell over time
that, in its fulfilment, utilises self-construction as a fundamental experience of appropriation and individual expression by
each family unit.
To the experiences briefly described, we have to add others, like those of Teddy Cruz, on the border between San Diego
and Tijuana7 that studies conflict as the main operational instrument to redefine the architectural practice in the
contemporary city , or the well known projects by Rural Studio in Alabama and by Jorge Jauregui in Rio de Janeiro
favelas contexts. A comprehensive investigation of how architects operate in areas of social conflict and of all the
alternative solutions to build affordable social housing when dealing with the informal city has not been undertaken yet,

See J. Beardsley, "Border Crossings: Tijuana/San Diego" In Harvard Design Magazine no28, 2008.

141

MIC _ My Ideal City

as much as there is not a know outcome of what have been accomplished by the various architectural experiences over
time.
What is missing, in fact, is a network connectioning the performers of social architecture all over the world and an
exchange of ideas about the experiences gained so far. If we add to this that reconciliation with the places of living
should also necessarily consider a rethinking of urban space, studying carefully at how the informal city is used and what
it requires, could provide an understanding on how important episodic experiences are on behalf of a reformulation of
the idea of the city as a whole.
The answers lie in the wealth of suggestions and the dynamics of the informal city as some acute interpreters of
modern and contemporary architecture have already guessed. The solutions are in the eyes of those who coached the
gaze to recognize them.

4.

Small utopias in big realities

Even though Michel Foucalt did not think to informal city when he wrote about heterotopias, some of his comments seem
to fit particularly well with the expressions of spontaneous architecture; it is very likely Foucault wrote that every
human group, whatever it is, carves out utopian places in the space it occupying, in which it really lives (). We dont
live in a black and white neutral space, we dont live () in the rectangle of a paper sheet. We live, die and love in a
squared space, cutted, variegated, with bright and dark areas, with drops, steps, depressions and bumps, with some
hard regions and other crumbly, permeable, porous8. Looking at quarters like Bosa in Bogot you can not help but
notice an articulation of the built that, although certainly does not correspond to the model of an ideal society, it does
take the shape of it for the mere fact of being an architecture, a system provided with a carapace designed by its own
inhabitants, based on shared conventions.
Those are small utopias pursued by individuals, microcosms apparently ephemeral but able to assume the dimensions
of a metropolis. The single Bosa residential units are self-generated and develop like living organisms in a manner that
seems to respond to the cellular automata of John Horton Conways Game of Life (1970).
On the grid of Conway, like in the Bosa chessboard, despite the simplicity of the laws governing the game, apparently
simple patterns may give rise to a veritable explosion of life forms in highly complex configurations or rather, to make
interesting this kind of mechanisms is the fact that, despite their basic physics is simple, their chemistry can be very
complicated9.
Following an elementary principle of cause and effect, the Bosa inhabitants articulate and transform their house favoring
the development of their social position and comunicate their status to the community in a clear way, through formal and
chromatic codes that replicate their impact on the urban dimension. Each living cell, in fact, can grow in height or recast
with an adjacent, may change or die as like as the Conway cells creating always new solutions and urban
transformations that give answer to the spurs that comes so much by their own internal and from neighboring cells.
The opportunities of adaptation and the continuous opening of new perspectives that these realities shows, respond to a
participatory process for the most part alien to the ideal that we wanted to forcibly impose to the very idea of the city;
8
9

M. Foucault, Utopie eteotopie, cit. p. 12.

Cfr. S. Hawking and L. Mlodinow, Il grande disegno, (Milano: Mondadori, 2011); tit.orig. The Grand Design, 2011.

142

MIC _ My Ideal City

the Modernism and Modern Architecture as also noted Kisho Kurokawa lack the intermediate spaces which, at one
time, allowed chaotic elements that were coexistent and virtually inseparabile to complement one another10

The slum of Dharavi (Mumbai, India)

10

K. Kurokawa, cit. in J. McGuirk, PREVI. The metabolist utopia In Domus no. 946, april 2011, p. 69.

143

MIC _ My Ideal City

Favelas in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil

Bosa (Bogot, Colombia); photo: F. Quici

144

MIC _ My Ideal City

Bosa (Bogot, Colombia); photo: F. Quici

Bosa (Bogot, Colombia); photo: F. Quici

145

MIC _ My Ideal City

Bosa (Bogot, Colombia); photo: F. Quici

Bosa (Bogot, Colombia); photo: F. Quici

146

MIC _ My Ideal City

Carin Smuts (CS Studio), Westbank Multi Pur pose Centre, Kuilsriver, Western Cape (2008)

147

2. The construction of a new urban imagery:

models, techniques, stereotypes

MIC _ My Ideal City

My Ideal City (MIC): Virtual Environments to Design the Future Town

Malvina Borgherini, MeLa Laboratorio Multimediale, University Iuav of Venice
Emanuele Garbin, MeLa Laboratorio Multimediale, University Iuav of Venice

1. Introduction
1.1 MIC project
MIC is an EU funded project to explore the use of shared virtual environments as part of a public discussion on the
issues of building the city of the future. The project involves four science museums Trenton, Lisbon, Copenhagen and
Jerusalem and MeLa Multimedia Lab of University IUAV of Venice, which was responsible for the artistic coordination
and implementation of part of the virtual environments*.
The initiative crosses themes and skills of social research, architectural and urban design, public administration and
technology in an interactive exploration of four cities, now visiting on web (www.myidealcity.eu) and on the exhibitions in
the four museums of the consortium.
The translation of places and family problems into a new medium is a chance to see them in different ways and from
different points of view, to imagine new scenarios to overcome barriers and stereotypes no longer effective. Virtual
environments are an ideal starting point for a 'game' serious simulation and imagination applied to social relations that
have as background the city scene, in particular those between the different categories of population.
The four cities involved represent four very different variations of the same idea of cities dialectics: European and
Mediterranean, old and new, real and virtual, rigid and at the same time changing. In this complexity, which represent
the city of MIC, is possible to recognize a character and an identification of the most valuable assets of the same
European culture.

1.2 From data to visualization

Understanding and reflecting the participants point of view was essential, therefore abstractions had to be carried on
carefully in order to turn them into a model that reflected the point of view of the participants. The situation resembles

The MIC project was funded by European Communitys Seventh Framework Programme, under Grant Agreement n. 230554. The project was
created by Carlo Maiolini and Maurizio Teli (Museo Tridentino di Scienze Naturali), coordinated by Denise Eccher, Carlo Maiolini, Maurizio Teli
(Museo Tridentino di Scienze Naturali) under the supervision of Michele Lanzinger CEO and Lavinia Del Longo (Museo Tridentino di Scienze
Naturali). It was developed by Bloomfield Science Museum Jerusalem; Ciencia Viva, Lisbon; Experimentarium, Copenhagen; Museo Tridentino di
Scienze Naturali, Trento; Universit IUAV di Venezia. Art direction: Malvina Borgherini and Emanuele Garbin Universit Iuav di Venezia.
Prrogramming and virtual platform: Virtual Italian Parks, Roma Moondus.
The project and model of Trento and Lisbon are developed by MeLa Laboratorio Multimediale Iuav (scientific director Malvina Borgherini);
chief project: Emanuele Garbin; team project: Emanuele Garbin and Malvina Borgherini with Eufemia Piizzi, Luciano Comacchio, Margherita
Marrulli, Silvia Spinelli (IT consulting Alessandro and Marco Forlin).
*

151

MIC _ My Ideal City

that of the client and the architect. The moderator must take the role of the architect and give the best possible answer to
the demands and wishes as seen in the words of the client.
The translation draw on existing typologies and textures re-arranging, re-scaling or re-combining them into new urban
spaces. This method ensures a clear reference to the local context.
Finally the translation was positively related to some principles proposed by art direction of the MIC-project that ensured
some degree of homogeneous approach of the different cities needed for the final user to make the comparison.
The general principles previously formulated for the virtual city project are:
the image of the virtual city should be characterized by a keen visionary force and a compelling power of attraction
the image of the virtual city should be purified of any visual stereotypes that tend to blight such interactive worlds
(avoiding hackneyed solutions derived from video games and film like Star Wars, Alien, Blade Runner)
metaphor-guide narratives and original visuals are necessary
the model-making work should be subordinate to creativity and the project overall
creativity ought to bloom out of a synthesis of suggestions derived from the focus group

Figure 1. Trento model: the old town centre and a frescoed facade

creativity may take form by incorporating text fragments, speech, voices, images, slogans and ideas issuing from the
focus group
the aim is to construct something similar to reality rather than a preliminary maquette
the avatar should always move within the natural internal bounds of the model-scene which ought never to be seen
from the outside or above.
the virtual city should echo the actual city but not be a brick-for-brick duplicate: not only may creative licence aid the
model's functionality, it may additionally be viewed as a golden opportunity to explore geometrical and to some extent
topological options in a more liberated manner.
152

MIC _ My Ideal City

symbolic elements may well be call on for recognition and identification (certain facades, roads, squares instanced
from the actual city)
furthermore these symbolic elements may also undergo manipulation.
The participatory process organised produced a certain form of material that cannot be directly inserted into the 3D
models: this mostly relates to transcribed or summarised thoughts and opinions expressed by the different social
category groups interviewed.
Especially in the cases of Trento and Lisbon this material, from which literal citations, catchwords or particularly
significant themes were subsequently extracted, was then transformed into images or scenes characterizing not only in
the real part but also the ideal part of the virtual city.
The literal citations, treated like images in the form of graffiti on the walls of the town, were introduced in the model as
visual or even acoustic expressions issuing directly from the persons interviewed and thus perfectly recognizable by their
authors. The particularly significant catch phrases or themes characterized the formal outcome of the models from the
start.

2. The digital models

2.1 General settings
For technical reasons the maximum area available for each model city is about nine hectares. These factors had indeed
influenced the model designs (especially Trento, Lisbon and Jerusalem), ushering in the application of synecdoche a
part representing a whole an essential device. A sequence of urban fragments may therefore be composed in a unique
way to represent the individual city (not necessarily corresponding geometrically or topologically to reality, but strongly
connoted by some of the present buildings and so instantly recognizable).
It is fundamental that the resulting city is recognizable (identity, memory as locations where there is a reflection on
complexity, on stratification and on a delineation of the bounds of a collective unconscious) and at the same time clearly
shows courses towards one's own transformational propensities (identity, interaction in the sense of an awareness of
one's ability to implement change).
The models are therefore characterized by an evident heterogeneity between the parts (for example the old town centre
of Trento is dissimilar to that of Piedicastello or Canova or Pove) marked through a complexity of maps, direct quotes
from the skin of the town (in white and black) or insertions of new images (in colour), treated in a different manner so as
to obtain different levels of consideration (coloured elements contrast obviously against a grey uniform background
which indicate novelty or in the case of Trento to extremely significant historical details like the painted facades).
The avatars themselves, in their exploration of the different urban centres, started to determine modifications in the
models: if an avatar visits the city alone, the place presents itself in a single configuration; however if more than one
avatar happen to enter one of the rooms that represent the ideal city, the number of images or film clips which are
linked to it are set off according to the quantity of visitors.

153

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 2. Trento model: the cathedral in the old town centre

2.2 Trento model

In Trento, the overall project path has been significantly affected by a social science approach, that brought, first of all,
toward the use of focus groups and ethnography, as the tools to elicit input for the elaboration of the concepts behind the
Ideal City. As underlined in other Deliverables, in Trento we focused on four different areas of the city:
1. the historical centre, with its inherent mixing of different cultures and practices
2. Piedicastello, an historically working class area on the right of the Adige River, in the west of the cities
3. Canova di Gardolo, a peripheral area in the north of Trento
4. Povo, a bourgeois area in the Eastern hills, with a strong feeling of being a town on its own
Summarizing, in Povo the main method of data gathering was an urban ethnography, carried on by a local ethnographer,
and the data has been summarized by her through the tools of anthropological research.
Povo is the only part of the town fully satisfied with its own situation: it has a salubrious relation with the surrounding
landscape, quite well connected to the centre and is composed of a loose hub of mostly detached family residences
immersed in greenery. The most fitting device for its representation seemed to be through a series of rooms in which the
landscape was contained.
In the other parts, the focus group has been the main technique. In those cases, the focus groups have been transcribed
and then analysed, through Grounded Theory. The analysis was carried on with an open coding based on a paragraph
by paragraph approach, followed by an axial coding collecting the categories created into a smaller subset (if we had
150 categories during the open coding, we ended up with 13 categories after the axial coding).

154

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 3. Trento model: the accesses to the rooms

The old town centre is seen as a fundamental reference location for the different areas of the town, being the zone that
all the other parts of Trento constantly refer to. Just by virtue of its very homogeneousness, the old centre is the zone in
which most of today's conflicts are concentrated (young / old, daytime town / night-time town, migrating / permanent,
students / townspeople, new/old etc.). These are the contrasts that the virtual town seeks to unveil.
The salient feature of the model of this area is the polarisation between the external facades on the central roads and
those of the internal courtyards. The external facades often frescoed with trompe l' oeil, caricatures, events, emblems
of life past constitute Trento's palimpsest, on which the ongoing life of the town have been traced and transcribed
through the ages, presently consolidated into its most identifiable and almost invariable aspect. What really does change
continuously in the actual town are the internal courtyards and ground floors that are designated for commercial activities
(the shop il negozio mentioned previously).
In the model the external facades correspond to the present day prospect (only their chromatic aspect has been altered,
unifying them into a white-black monotone that contrasts with occasional colour, employed to highlight some historical
example of special significance or to indicate access); however great licence has been exercised in rendering the
internal courtyards and they bear no geometrical or topological relation to actuality.
Interchange with the virtual public, the avatars, occurs in the internal courtyards, defined as rooms. Here Trento's
imaginary residents' vocal imprints or graffiti are presented on inside walls. Specifically in this area there will be four
transformable environments:
the new / old conflict room, in which examples of new and old skins (here represented by the architectural surfaces of
contemporary buildings; glass, steel and cement serigraphs, in contrast to columns and mouldings of marble, age-worn
timbers), yet also where relevant graffiti that calls for the cancellation of new parts of the town will be shown (Madonna
Bianca in the '70s bore monsters. There's 12-13, my ideal town would be without those abandoned monsters here
the reference is directed at the former cement works LET'S KNOCK 'EM DOWN!);
the migrating / permanent conflict room where the relations between non-EEC newcomers and indigenous townsfolk
(poor devils after all, we had coffee speaking by way of gestures) and the relations within a town that has recently
undergone radical change (in Piazza Dante you just had a few clochards who'd amble on after an offered cigarette and
glass of wine, but today the problems have taken a turn for the worst);
the young / old, student / towny, night-life / daytime conflict rooms with all the characteristic intolerance and
contradiction (here they put in eight hours work and sixteen hours sleep, if you have a party they call the police, if you
155

MIC _ My Ideal City

hang out a while in the park along come the police. They pretty much confine you to go to bed!, University town? Well,
the young are around. We give them the opportunity to enjoy themselves!, I'll kick it off with a bucket of water thrown
from my upstairs window).
The major part of Piedicastello the district of Trento on the other side of the the Adige river where the ancient town
settlement was situated beneath the mountain is occupied by an edifice (the former cement works) which will undergo
a radical and unexpected transformation. It is interesting that from this zone, so strongly characterised by the former
cement works' presence, there is no visual connection with the monster while the centre of Trento is clearly in view.
One adjunct wing of the old centre is placed in this part of the model, the bridge that connections it with the old town
centre (the reference, as resolved by the focus group, is the Bocchi project of the 1980s of a bridge populated by shops
and commercial activity, rather like Venice's Rialto Bridge or Florence's Ponte Vecchio, with more of a visual opening
onto the river), the second wing is the former cement works by the mountain.
Specifically in this area there are two changeable environments:
the room containing the secret garden is characterised by an upward and labyrinthine path, in which one may enter an
alleyway of one of the old centre's enclaves, this leads to the top of Dos Trento (originally named Mount Verruca by the
Romans)
and which terminates, on reaching the Cesare Battisti monument, with a panoramic visa encompassing the entire town
of Trento;

Figure 4. Trento model: the night room

the room for the former cement works is interpreted as a hollow screen that summons up and displays the internal
spaces, almost a sort of counter-facade of the mountain. The screen is accessible and will become an object to attain
through a series of openings, stairwells, etc. This special place is destined to accommodate the much call for night-life
aggregation hub for Trento. It is a place where to look and be looked at, where the young are observe from inside and
from where the young can look out from.
Canova di Gardolo, a suburb about 5 km to the north of central Trento is characterised by a strong presence of non-EEC
residents and migrants, a rather spacious part of the town yet not so easily identifiable. Canova has no visual connection
with the centre of Trento, nor does it have a wide-ranging view of the neighbouring landscape or the mountains, an
imposing element that characterises the other districts of the town.
A conclusion was reached that two elements might be modified in order to mark a certain will to change in this zone:

156

MIC _ My Ideal City

the piazza, allowing a circular introspective glance, in order to nurture the feeling of being part of a community;
the tower, allowing for a panoramic vista, in order to reaffirm the visual connection with the centre of Trento.
It is symptomatic that the strongest request to emerged from the focus group in this zone (youngsters had asked for a
statue of theirs to be placed in the centre of Canova) was the possibility to see themselves represented within the town,
attest themselves in relation to Trento. The distance between Canova and Trento is not very far but is above all a visual
void that needs to be replenished: this visual exclusion hinders a feeling of connection with Trento, prevents the Canova
community from identify itself with it.

2.3 Lisbon model

Lisbon is a city with a lost identity, with a somewhat evaporated centre yet the city still maintains today its
strong and recognisable character. The scattered developments over the last few decades all occurred away
from the old town centre, attempting to reactivate the strong link with the Tejo river but leaving Baixa and the
medieval castle district of So Jorge untouched, moreover it perpetuated their aura of something approaching
esteemed dissolution: from Expo '98 to the new cultural centre at Belem of the early 1990s, from the
restoration of the buildings gutted by the 1988 Chiado fire to the re-conversion of the buildings on the river,
Docas, between Baixa and Belem. Baixa was a symbol of revival in the aftermath of the 1755 earthquake
this is the central zone of Lisbon that extends from the squares of Rossio and De Figueira to the area
bordering the Tejo river and across its more symbolic square, Praa do Comerio built along geometric
Enlightenment lines by Marqus de Pombal.

Figure 5. Lisbon model: Baixa historical perpendicular road grid

It was decided that this should be the reference zone for the model of an actual/ideal Lisbon, making all converge in a
single space and with particular stratagems including some other areas discussed in the focus group:
Miradouro da Graa / Elevador da Bica
Cais do Sodr / Cacilhas
Ponte 25 de Abril / Docas,
Castelo de So Jorge
157

MIC _ My Ideal City

Torre de Belm.
A portion of Baixa, stretched out between the two extremes, the medieval labyrinthine dispersal and its geometrical
orientation towards the sea, had been chosen which denoted a particular and appealing aspect to represent Lisbon,
indeed these are the same determining factors when considering any virtual world. A division between sides/facades, as
in Trento's case, is the base for the setting: the layout of a perpendicular road grid designed in the eighteenth-century
redevelopment constitutes the recognisable face of Lisbon. To this is added the horizontal ground plane, with its typical
black and white paving, a screen of ante litteram pixels.
The virtual model in some locations reopens the ground floors of individual blocks, making them permeable to an
avatar's glance and personal interaction. It was thought best to use rooms with different themes and images in order to
emphasise the differentiation of the grid mesh.
The city grid will be doubled along its longitudinal axis, for the positioning of a mirror at this juncture: both an
optical/virtual device and an acknowledgement of the public. Some doors on the reflective surface will open up some
passages in correspondence to roads that cross (emblematically used for the maze and the idea of discovery, in contrast
with the longitudinal roads that symbolise orientation and the idea of return). The doors will lead on into rooms, the
inside of which will represented those aspects, those features and conflicts that characterise the zones of the city that
are distant from the centre, the new facets of Lisbon.
The new facets of Lisbon could be:
its rapport with the river, rather the waterfront with all the new characteristics of the town and the aspects bound up
with an economically sustainable use of the Tejo;
its rapport with urban green spaces, particularly through the creation of a room that takes as its theme the gardens of
the Gulbelkian foundation;
the vistas which criss-cross the town, its miradores that are situated on the highest points overlooking Lisbon;

Figure 6. Lisbon model: the historical facades room

Its neglected rapport with the old town centre, via rooms dug into the eighteenth-century building blocks whilst reutilising typical architectural and urban elements that represent Lisbon.
Here, as with Trento, the contemporary presence of an avatar triggers changes of light or the projections of images and
video. This thus represents, by way of their own highly condensed collaboration, a type of emblem for an effective
158

MIC _ My Ideal City

meeting and dialogue that could well go on to generate change in the actual city itself. This stratagem is the foundation
and point of departure for the launch of a series of mini-games yet to be put into production.

3. Modeling criteria
Design and modeling MIC worlds started from the decision to subordinate the entire workflow and every technical choice
to the overall targets of the project. From the beginning it was clear that the realization of multyplayer networked and
interactive environments would impose significant limitations regarding the size of the geometric and graphics contents.
It was therefore decided to introduce a 'metaphoric' mediation which was immediately detected in a scenographic
metaphor. If the MIC worlds but in general any shared virtual world should be able to contain heterogeneous sets of
objects, a 'realistic' metaphor is always inevitably inadequate, unable to match expectations. The theatrical tradition, in
contrast to that of cinematographic realism, proposes mechanisms of construction and exploration of virtual
environments based on a certain suspension of verisimilitude, an agreement between the author and his audience. A
theatrical metaphor, a scenographic approach to the modeling of virtual worlds allows degrees of freedom that broadly
balance the technical limitations.
The MIC project was motivated by the intention to restore a greater degree of authenticity in the various processes
dealing with the creation and communication of the urban imaginary: authenticity in selecting and questioning samples of
urban population, in the synthesis of their contributions, in the translation of new slogans and new images in new
models. The need for authenticity matches in a contradictory way with the choice of theatrical metaphor, but this
contadiction is only apparent. In fact, not necessarily 'fiction' is a synonym of 'inauthenticity' or 'falsity' and finally you can
choose to prefer a genuine experience of a fiction instead of a false experience of reality.

Figure 7. Lisbon model: Praa do Comerio to the Tejo river

159

MIC _ My Ideal City

In modeling worlds MIC we used three ingredients: basic purposes, leading metaphors and infographic instruments. The
most important intention is to preserve the depht of the urban image, considering that the depth of the urban 'face' or
'facade' is one of the essential characteristics of urban experience. And precisely the inability to perceive this complexity
and richness is the main reason for the poor experience produced by many real and virtual places.
The realization of these urban scenes has preferred the modes of replacement, analogy, quotation to those of simple
reproduction. In the spatial narrative of MICs worlds you can find many rhetorical figures, particularly those of metaphor,
metonymy, synecdoche. The recurrent condition is to have to represent the whole the city, a square, a neighborhood, a
common behavior, a social class by his own single part some facades, some emblematic places, slogans or
whatever. A non homogeneous reduction of details has been preferred to a linear simplification so as to leave some
elements of a complexity comparable to that of reality. The concept of Level of Detail (LOD) was completely rejected
because it was considered that the visitor's attention should be able to instantly focus on a specific detail or open to a
broad vision of a neighborhood only depending on the amplitude of his visual field.
Characteristics of the virtual space and ways of exploring MICs cities are very similar to those of a stage set opened
between the acts. It is as if the avatar could wander through the wings of paper and wood of a scene, indifferent rather
curious and amazed by the spatial and visual incoherences that inevitably occur.
Lets describe some of the properties of these spaces and these movements. The most striking feature of the virtual
urban spaces, compared with the real ones, is that of heterogeneity, or anisotropy.
The sizes and distances in virtual environments shrink, some blocks disappear or are reduced to a portion, the whole city
is represented by some districts: in the case of Trento an entire neighborhood is replaced by a caf interior, in the case
of Lisbon a district composed on a regular and repetitive grid is reduced in the number of its blocks. The distances
between the parts of the city are reduced or vanish: between the districts of Trento virtual transfers are instantaneous
and made possible by entering particular rooms. In the transition between the city of Trento and its suburb of
Piedicastello this special portal is preceded by a contraction of the street that leads to it. The real elements and those of
invention (or anticipations of a possible future) are recomposed into sets that retain some recognizable features and
transform or remove inessential parts. None of these 'contractions' is the simple product of an automated task, but
always the result of a narrative project.
The accessibility of the avatars to the various parts of the model is the result of opposing forces. The shape of the
invisible surfaces that contains the movements of the virtual bodies does not matches exactly with the geometry of
visible buildings but sometimes departs from them. The avatar is almost always kept at a certain distance from the
visible surfaces, not to avoid close-up view of the approximate geometry or textures, but to prevent stall conditions or
complete disorientation. The shape of these limitations actually allows more than once to see what's behind the scenes:
in fact in Lisbon it happens that one is led to discover the edge of the mirror that doubles the entire model; in Trento, the
invisible bond becomes even visible where you can see a double meaning text saying that 'there are walls you cannot
see'. Also a spatial bug, the fall out of bounds of the model, allows a view of the whole scene from an external point of
view, which is that of its maker, and is an extreme condition of awareness of the fiction.

160

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 8. Lisbon model: Praa do Comerio and the acquarium

The prevalence of pictures and textures over geometries derives from the premises declared at first. In the model, as in
a painted scenery, solid structure acts as a simple support for the images. From the same preferences derives also the
prevalence of a mapped environment made of photos rather than artificial or procedural images. The richness, the
textures, the light of the real facades and landscapes get in the virtual cities as a photographic quotation, as a luminous
footprint. No matter of interest may be found in a procedural map, produced by the combination of fractal geometries, as
a procedural map can mimic the abundance and articulation of a real texture, but not its deep and inexhaustible
complexity. On a real surface are layered visible traces of natural and human history, the ghosts of countless individual
and collective stories never completely deciphered. For the same reason, when it was not possible or appropriate to
capture the actual map of a surface, it was decided to create a new texture from real items, founded within the same
context: for example, in the case of the completely invented parts of Lisbon we used many photos of azulejos, a tipical
blue tiles used for centuries in Portugal, and also photos of historical commercial inscriptions or details of vegetation
from a well-known urban park. In a particular case we wanted to make this mechanism explicit by 'embedding' it in
himself in a room of Lisbon: on the walls of this court some 'snapshots' taken by avatars during their exploration become
maps of the model, and can be photographed again.
In the image processing two processes only apparently contradictory are matching: after you have worked an extraction
of images, a direct acquisition of parts of visible reality, these images undergo strong transformations, a process of
abstraction. The action of desaturation, contrasting, applying grain or noise, blurring or dimming serves to widen the
range of the possibilities of interpretation that had been previously restricted by the 'reduction' implicit in the shooting.
The raw photo shows the 'face' of the city on a certain day and at a certain time, but the photo processed gives the
161

MIC _ My Ideal City

possibility to imagine a different one, and many others. In some parts of these models maps are made pulsing, by means
of transitions between different images: even so a small number of looks is multiplied in a continuous varia-tion.
As the synthetic textures the artificial light the simulation of natural and artificial light has been banished from the
scenes of MIC. All the light needed is already contained in the photos that give back it in any visualization of the model:
with some forcing in using software for virtual environments we translated all the lighting in the properties of materials.
Again the stage set metaphor has effectively been able to prevail on that 'reali-stic'. Eventually the size of these
environments, corresponding to a total of several thousand photographic maps, has exceeded a critical threshold: when
it became possible to get lost, arrange meeting between avatars, meet again, the virtual world has become in its own
way 'city 'and moved to a more advanced level of reality.

162

MIC _ My Ideal City

Cartographic models for a diachronic analysis of the urban image of Rome

Piero Albisinni, Laura Carlevaris, Antonio Catizzone, Laura De Carlo, Vittorio Di Stefano, Alessandro
Micucci, Dipartimento di Storia, Disegno e Restauro dellArchitettura, Sapienza, Universit di Roma

1.

Introduction

The city is a complex construction stratified over time by a series of transformations that can be interpreted and studied
from many different angles.
For a scholar the layout of the city, i.e. its formal organisation, is effectively a system of indications and facts about the
city itself and the functional reasons behind its evolution.
Since the city uses space as well as physical and symbolic objects to express the importance that people give to their
position in time, space, history and nature, the use of cartographic techniques and advanced three-dimensional
visualisation procedures makes it possible to virtually reconstruct the morphological and spatial dimension of the
physical features of urban space.
If one considers the physical elements of the city system as the material expression of all the evolutionary phenomena of
sites, its representation can clearly be considered as a system of general knowledge capable of coalescing extremely
heterogeneous information.
Two-dimensional cartography traditionally tells the story of the urban fabric by freezing a historical moment in time;
however it cannot convey the complexity of a dynamic experience based on the direct relationship with the physical
dimension of urban space. This complexity is based on the continuous interaction between the perception of the physical
structure and the sedimentation of historical and cartographic facts.
The enormous changes that take place in cities over the years have determined an evolution of the morphological
variations in the territorial setup, in the architectural stratification of the urban structure and also in the perception and
use of urban space. Cities, or the small historical districts we see today, have been shaped by a series of sometimes
very well documented changes which can be interpreted in many different ways. If one considers the organisation of
urban space as a place where people interact, then bibliographical, iconographic and cartographic sources can
contribute to providing a diachronic reconstruction of the urban fabric.
This reconstruction is possible thanks to the historical representations of the city that have been produced over the
years, for example, iconographic or pictorial representations which are sometimes symbolic if not metaphorical: these
representations make it possible to understand the sites even if their accuracy is debatable.
These are important sources of information often influenced by the scientific quality of the data since in order to be
useful these documents have to be objectively valid (to some degree or another), easily identifiable and, at the same
163

MIC _ My Ideal City

time, have an evident geographic, geometric and topological connection. The problems raised by the study of changes in
the urban environment involve the identification of a where that ensures an evident spatial matrix to the when, a matrix
which in turn makes it possible to formulate architectural considerations and evaluations from a historical and
geographical point of view.
The use of computer science in survey and cartographic representation and the creation of regional IT systems has
made it possible not only to establish interlinked georeferential databases (containing enormous amounts of different
information that can gradually be updated), but above all facilitate multiple consultation and later elaboration.
Progress in the field of digital cartography used to create three-dimensional models is therefore the starting point not
only for a correct representation of the complex urban phenomenon, but also as a way to review space - not on the basis
of planimetric explorations but by creating virtual models more or less automatically generated based on the cartography
itself. These models can be used directly as a visual basis on which to assess and evaluate the quantity and quality of
the values in question.
In this sense, the cartographic model is a metric and quantitative representation of the city; it is precise, objective and
verifiable insofar as it is produced using tools that take sufficiently accurate measurements. Three-dimensional
cartography should be studied to identify the specificities and details present in the restitution of the urban space; these
characteristics immediately prompt one to try and use the same representative exuberance to reconstruct the historical
past of the city or at least of some of its more important periods, especially the changes in its orography and
constructions.
In this context there are two separate methodological aspects: one involving the creation of the urban model and the
ensuing technical implications (data implementation, automatisms, typo-morphological studies, scale of the model)
and the other relating to the evolution of the city based on the comparison of different cartographic models (two and
three-dimensional).
Current procedures regarding the digital elaboration of metric and dimensional data from 3D digital cartography make it
possible to implement completely new historiographical reinterpretations of urban transformations no longer based
merely on comparisons or at best on the superimposition of two-dimensional graphic drawings (plans), but on a
particularly convincing visual, three-dimensional interpretation.
The creation of a virtual model based on 3D digital cartography that captures the current structure of the city can be
used as a three-dimensional reference grid to visualise the spatial changes: this visualisation will be implemented using
a procedure that works backwards in history. The task involves comparing the cartographic and iconographic data found
during historical and documentary research with a grid developed using accurate topographic information. This will be
achieved using elements of the urban structure (orographical features, empty urban spaces or existing building, etc.) that
have not changed their position or morphological characteristics. This can be done from both an urban and architectural
point of view identifying, for example, the features that have not changed and the fixed elements in each street or road.
The creation of a virtual space oriented on the basis of these fixed elements makes it possible to introduce not just
cartographic data but all the data required to create a diachronic, flexible and consultable model illustrating changes in
the urban environment. To achieve this several procedures must be implemented depending on the different kinds of
historical data available.

164

MIC _ My Ideal City

Generally speaking, as far as iconographic documents are concerned, basic data includes not only cartography
developed using survey methods and systems that exploited contemporary technology (and is represented mainly in the
planimetry), but also by an extensive corpus of non scientific images which portray the city. The latter is an attempt to
simultaneously reconstruct the plan and elevations by using pseudo-perspective views that are difficult to classify.
Standardisation of the data and insertion of the latter into a diachronic, consultable urban model immediately requires a
decision to be taken regarding the scale of representation, a scale that has to consider the digital nature of the
cartographic data. In actual fact, digital cartography does not involve using the traditional idea of scale because when we
know the coordinates of each point we can calculate the topographical distance and the size of the represented objects
irrespective of the graphic scale used. The additional features of each entity that are part of the identification code of this
kind of data also allow the model to be consulted regardless of the scale of representation. Nevertheless, the concept of
scale cannot be completely disregarded; it should be considered in particular in the framework of acquisition and
representation of the information since the latter determine the precision and resolution of the map as well as efficient
visualisation. Therefore with regard to digital cartography and the validity of our model, we will refer to a nominal scale,
with reference to the ratio of scale that a traditional map with similar metric precision and informative contents would
have.

2. Choosing the field of study

Although any number of built-up areas can benefit from a methodology that reconstructs the changes that have taken
place in the urban environment, the city of Rome is a paradigmatic example of a historical stratification that has
constantly reused the same sites and physical structures. Furthermore, Rome is unique insofar as its destiny as a
modern capital dates back to the eighth century B.C. But real continuity belongs to the present and not the past because
the kinetic and three-dimensional image seen by anyone walking the streets of Rome projects a range of different
portraits of its historical past.
From the point of view of implementation, the historical centre of Rome is an excellent study area not only because it has
a technically good selection of sufficiently continuous cartographic records to allow comparison between the different
iconographic sources, but also because we have the rare privilege to be able to access cartographic documents from the
classical period: the Forma urbis, a marble plan of the city made in the early third century A.D.
We must also consider the maquette of Imperial Rome made by Italo Gismondi in the mid-nineteenth century. Assisted
by scholars familiar with the topography of ancient Rome, Gismondi used several reconstructions made in the early
eighteenth century (for example, the maquettes by Giuseppe Marcelliani and Paul Bigot) to build the maquette using the
restitution scale of 1:250, near to the one of the Forma Urbis (1:240) which the architect had been working on since the
twenties with Giuseppe Lugli. The maquette was undoubtedly intended to express the orographical and topographical
flavour of the ancient city rather than being a faithful reproduction of the architecture of each building; it is a starting
point for any study of antiquity that aims at enhancing the perceptive and reconstructive elements of the physical
features of the urban space in a sort of efficient anticipation of the possibilities now provided by digital technology. Even
though Gismondi used the information and experience he gleaned from his years of survey and detailed studies, the
maquette has always been criticised because he invented so many architectural details using undocumented
165

MIC _ My Ideal City

information. However, we should remember how effective and unique the maquette is in portraying ancient Rome
compared to the many attempts made using digital technology.
While examining the evolution of urban space, we identified two extremely important elements that can be used to create
a diachronic representation of Rome: on the one hand, the 3D digital cartography made in 2000 which makes it possible
to virtually reconstruct the orography of the land and the volume of the buildings since it provides information relative to
the coordinates of the points needed to determine the required planimetric and altimetric levels; on the other, the abovementioned maquette by Gismondi which represents albeit with its undeniable approximations and imaginative and in
some ways literary reconstructions the final arrival point against which our backward-looking enquiry must
necessarily end.
Homogenisation of the data inevitably required the maquette to be surveyed with a laser scanner. This procedure was
carried out by the Universities of Virginia and California in Los Angeles and coordinated by Prof. Bernard Frischer with
the collaboration of Prof. Gabriele Guidi of the Milan Polytechnic.
We examined the extensive iconography of the city of Rome to establish intermediate stages in this time frame spanning
over two thousand years. We studied representations we considered to be historiographically and cartographically
significant because of the technical characteristics of the survey operations used and the quality of the graphic restitution
of the measurements. In this context, the historical maps by Bufalini, Tempesta, Maggi and Nolli - all very different from
one another - were particularly helpful.
In the eighteenth century a new representation model was developed: scientifically accurate urban surveys were
necessary because of the complex problems associated with growth and the rationalisation of the changes: this required
a new approach to town planning.

Figure 1. Stratification of the city visible thanks to the superimposition of historical cartography

166

MIC _ My Ideal City

Compared to the Baroque birds-eye view, the iconographic map using zenithal projection, with its elementary structure
of full and empty spaces, ascribable to the quantifiable volume of occupied space, shows that the ratio between the road
network and the built-up area is the key element to interpret the city; it permits the rational appreciation, management
and design of the overall urban environment.
So during the eighteenth century modern maps of the most important European cities were made; they were
increasingly accurate and based on standard codes of representation.
The New Map of Rome by Giovanni Battista Nolli, begun in 1736 and published in 1748, shows the final, definitive form
of the baroque city. Nollis map is a crucial reference point to reconstruct the urban history of Rome, making it possible to
compare the fabric of the city with the survey made by its author. It also highlights the changes and additions in the
contemporary city compared to eighteenth-century Rome. Much more could be said especially about the quality of Nollis
map and the extensive information it provides regarding the gradient and acclivity of the land.

Figure 2. Synoptic images of the historical cartography of Rome and identification of the main topographic landmarks necessary for the
georeferentiation of the cartographic data and the historical iconography of Rome used as complementary data to define and visualise
changes in the urban environment

167

MIC _ My Ideal City

Although the work was based on a systematic survey of the urban fabric inside the Aurelian walls and the selected
methods and instruments ensured objectivity, the author also had access to extensive traditional cartography in which
images of built-up areas were intelligently used as a cultural and propaganda tool. At the same time a flourishing
editorial business regarding topography also developed to which the study and representation of the ancient city had
contributed for centuries by stimulating the invention and development of tools, techniques and methods to produce
images of the city.
Most of the cartography, executed during previous centuries using completely different techniques and representation
methods, provided an array of ideas and information, albeit with varying degrees of accuracy.
So the first problem to be solved was to recreate the georeferential conditions of the urban fabric by topographically
correcting the buildings using easily identifiable landmarks; the latter were assigned geographical coordinates taken from
the superimpositions and current cartography.
The computer-based project could also use the landmarks to create a deformation in the historical map examined at any
one time; although it alters the visual quality of the document, this kind of deformation has the advantage of making it
possible to compare objects mapped in different historical periods. Every building could also be assigned a ground line
taken from available iconographic sources as well as an albeit indicative volumetry: this will make it possible to create
three-dimensional models of the main evolutionary stages of the urban context. At this point, there is nothing to stop us
using these model images taken from the same viewpoint to visualise a snapshot down through the centuries, linking
the perceptive changes in urban space.

3. Procedures and problems in the elaboration of a three-dimensional model

To create the 3D digital model, we considered the digital three-dimensional cartography of Rome made in 2000. This
provided us with a map in which every element, based on a nominal 1:2000 scale of representation, was effectively
located in a Cartesian space of coordinates x, y and z. In a CAD environment, this cartography looks like a series of
layers representing groups of objects with the same functional importance (topographic points, residential housing,
religious buildings, roads, pavements, etc.). This classification makes it possible to identify and isolate very simply, using
a series of filters, the groups of objects that make the digital model possible. It means considering certain elements
present in the cartography which, it should be remembered, was not executed to make digital models but to create the
structure necessary to make objects used to make the model itself. It is also necessary for the nominal scale 1:2000 of
the digital cartography to be used as the nominal scale for the model.
For this reason we decided to concentrate only on the two physical aspects that represent the urban environment at this
scale of representation, in other words:
-

orography, considered as the representation of a continuous surface using topographic data;

the built-up environment, rendered by the representation of solids created through the extrusion of the surfaces
at the height of the polylines of the eaves of the buildings which, in digital cartography, together with the ground
line define the building itself.

168

MIC _ My Ideal City

The study of the orography is particularly important, more so in a city like Rome where the ground level has changed
enormously over the years: this is obvious when one compares the difference between the current ground level and past
levels revealed by archaeological and stratigraphic excavations.
Specific procedures have to be used to construct the basic orographical model of the current ground level of the city.
The orographical surface is created using a trilateration technique that produces a network of triangles arranged in
space whose vertexes coincide with the chosen points.
Further TIN (Triangular Irregular Network) or GRID modelling techniques make it possible to optimise the illustration of
the orographical model.
In the digital model developed using the chosen nominal scale, the urban space is therefore well illustrated by the builtup environment and by the orography which has to be carefully modelled. These two elements are well suited to
illustrate the morphological characteristics of this complex environment and can certainly lead to a result that is both
metrically accurate and sufficiently realistic from a communications point of view.
After all, the city develops and grows thanks to a continuous exchange between its anthropic features, relative to its
buildings, and its orographical features which, at least theoretically, depend on nature.
The methodology used at this stage to create the model is quite simple and almost automatic thanks to the use of
software for the modelling of surfaces and solids. By selecting and isolating the elements of the cartography relative to
one or other of the chosen groups, it is possible to create a continuous rectangular grid surface that portrays the
orographical lay of the land. Instead, modelling of the built-up environment is achieved by extruding the surfaces at the
height of the polylines of the eaves of each building until it intercepts the orographical surface.
This quick and rapid procedure does however require more in-depth study of certain aspects which cannot be solved
using automatisms: this means intervening on the initial cartographic data as well as the three-dimensional model. In the
case of the surface representing the orography of the land, solutions have to be found regarding how to connect
differences in ground levels, retaining walls, steps and graded ramps or borders. Instead the problems regarding the
modelling of built-up areas are less complex and multifaceted. In fact, all it requires is to work on each building to
establish its typological characteristics, for example the reconstruction of the position of the roofs.
In short, the construction of digital urban models, i.e., recreating urban reality as a mix between a map and its
corresponding three-dimensional element, basically complements the traditional way interpretative tools portray the
historical changes that take place in a city.
This type of three-dimensional cartographic model exploits and enhances an array of very different documents that are
not necessarily scientific; the aim is to create an interactive visualisation of the history of each district or each building
in order to assess the morphological, dimensional and perceptive changes that have taken place.
Superimposition makes it possible to insert different kinds of information from different sources (iconographical,
documentary as well as literary) in an ad hoc database. This information regarding the town-planning and architectural
history of places can be expressed by geometrically, topographically and topologically redefined and georeferenced
representations: this makes it possible to create different levels which can be used in many ways, even interactively.
This is the field of study currently undertaken by a course organised by the Department of Survey, Analysis and Drawing

169

MIC _ My Ideal City

of the Environment and Architecture (RADAAR) of Rome La Sapienza University. This article illustrates the initial steps
in a methodological and operative project that may achieve scientifically valid results only after having been studied and
developed more extensively as well as having been repeatedly tested.

Figure 3. Models that visualise the urban infrastructure during different historical periods and comparison based on the identification of
certain topographical landmarks:
a. 3D digital model based on the digital cartography(2000);
b. graphic model by A. Tempesta (1593);
c. digital model of Imperial Rome based on the laser scansion of the maquette by I. Gismondi

170

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 4. Applying 3D modeling techniques to the existing map elements drawn by Tempesta (1593), is shown the virtual model of the city for that
time, trought the extraction of those data from the cartographic da

171

MIC _ My Ideal City

The overall urban image: a tool for the management of landscape and urban
planning*
Santiago Manuel Pardo Garca, University of Malaga
Jess Rodrguez Rodrguez, Centro de Estudios Paisaje y Territorio (Sevilla)
Florencio Zoido Naranjo, Centro de Estudios Paisaje y Territorio (Sevilla)

1. Introduction
The notion of landscape now has a greater functional significance, as the Florence Convention (2000) has extended to
the whole of the territory its intellectual and scientific prestige. Largely related to outstanding places for their beauty or
rural or natural conditions, it has now reached urban areas and even degraded sites1.
This intellectual and semantic progress does not override the dominant social notion of is allocation to natural or rural
spaces, nor the little scientific development when applied to the city; for this latter purpose it is frequently used as a
synonym of urban morphology, or even simply urban space. If the innovative principles and proposals of the European
Landscape Convention (hereinafter ELC) wish to be applied to the city, it is necessary to give a more comprehensive,
yet precise content to the concept of urban landscape. Broader since it has to include not only the objective fact (formal
and functional), but also the perception and appreciation of it. A more precise concept requires, as has been done for
rural and natural landscapes, specifying its attributes and methods of analysis and interpretation.
Our proposal, in line with the definition established in the ELC, is understanding urban landscape as "a built-up area, as
perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/ or human factors". The
development of this way of understanding the urban landscape2 leads inevitably to a typology of different situations (preand post-industrial consolidated compact city landscapes, peri-urban landscapes, metropolitan, etc.); in all of them,
albeit the different situations, the condition of landscape refers to the "quality of the territory"3 in real or objective spaces
in three ways (ecological, functional and scenic), mainly expressed through two parameters:

the overall urban image,

free public space4.

* This paper is the result of the research carried out at the Centro de Estudios Paisaje y Territorio in Sevilla, as well as the final masters thesis
References, terminology and procedures regarding the overall urban image" presnted by the first of the authors in February 2011.
1 European Landscape Convention. Artcles 1 and 2, definitions and scope.
2 Work which is being carried out in the Centro de Estudios Paisaje y Territorio (Junta de Andaluca Public Universities of Andaluca).
3 The term quality allows here the subjective view and assessment. See Zoido Naranjo, Florencio (2011), El paisaje un concepto til para
relacionar esttica, tica y poltica (pending publication).
4 Silva y otros (2011), Accin piloto: Identificacin, caracterizacin y cualificacin de recursos paisajsticos en el ncleo y entorno urbano de
Constantina (Sevilla) Programa PAYS.MED.URBAN, 2010-2011 (unpublished).

172

MIC _ My Ideal City

The overall image is the aspect addressed in the following sections of this paper. Regarding the relationship between
"urban landscape" and open spaces it is sufficient to say now, with the sole purpose of enabling the comprehension of
our reflexion, that the assessment of their quality includes that of the perimeter buildings and their relation with non-built
space, as well as the planning, treatment and use of open spaces. To suggest the interest of this approach, it is
sufficient to remember the contents of implementation instruments as valuable as the "ordinances of the urban
landscape of the city of Barcelona", or others which have been inspired by them5.

2. Representation of the city and overall image

The perception of the city is the result of a complex, collective, multifaceted process. The general views, which gather
overall images of towns, are especially attractive to the population. Lynch, referring to the preferences expressed by
citizens, says: "a wide view produces an emotional state of delight and this phenomenon has been mentioned
repeatedly. [...] A well organized panorama seems to be a fundamental element of enjoyment of the city. "6

Figure 1. View of Venice of H. Schedel, Liber Chronicarum, Nuremberg, Anton Koberger, 1493. Source The Hebrew University of Jerusalem &
The Jewish National & University Library

Ordeninances of Barcelona (Ordinance of the uses of landscape in the city of Barcelona BOP 146-19/06/1999) and Toledo (special ordinance
regulating the activities and structures installed in the public streets and opne spaces of the city of Toledo. 27/06/02).
6 Lynch, K. La imagen de la ciudad, 1976 pg. 43.
5

173

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 2. Bird's eye view of Venice, published in Civitates Orbis Terrarum, I-43, de Braun & Hogenberg, 1572. Source: The Hebrew University of
Jerusalem & The Jewish National & University Library

Throughout history many ways of seeing and representing the city as a whole have been developed. From the earliest
engravings published in the fifteenth century to the present day, descriptive images of the city have followed two main
types: a view a common observer can obtain from the field, and geometric representations of the city. In this range any
"classic" type of urban image from the panoramic views of urban skylines to orthogonal plans, can be associated7.
This variety can be seen, for example, in the itinerary set by three images of the city of Venice. In 1493, the "Liber
Chronicarum" by Anton Koberger reflects the skyline from a slightly elevated point of view, but associated with the views
that an observer could have from the waters of the lagoon (Fig. 1). In the "Civitates Orbis Terrarum"8 by Braun and
Hogenberg, dating from 1572, a bird's eye view is chosen, constituting a more advanced level of abstraction and
technical capacity, since the point of view is impossible for a real observer, although managing to convey a deeper
understanding of the structure of the city (Fig. 2). Finally, the plan of Stockdale from 1800 declines any landscaping
vocation and is a fully geometrically, accurate and with great potential for administrative use representation (Fig. 3).

Richard Kagan suggest in "Urban images of the hispanic world 1493-1780" a possible classification of these representations according to the
adopted point of view.
8 The content of this atlas of cities is a good example of simultaneous use of different points of view, associated to the different authors which
collaborated in it drafting, the intentions of each one of them and the stucture of the presented cities.
7

174

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 3. Plan of Venice, published by J. Stockdale en 1800, London. Source: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem & The Jewish National &
University Library

This historic transition will have important consequences, and the perceived "image" of the city as a unitary whole will
lose importance in the administrative field, which will opt for plans to establish the processes of urban management and
planning. One thing will be the technical representation of the city, which allows physical intervention in it, and another
the global contemplation of landscape and its artistic treatment9. Even with the current means of modeling and
representation, which open new horizons, this division is still dragging in many cases. The problem is that the urban
plans represented in maps are complicated to understand for most people, and fail to capture the essence of overall
images which are reflected in perspective views. On the other hand, certain changes over the past centuries with regard
to the motivations of such depictions can also be observed. The engravings of Anton Van den Wyngaerde10 are an
outstanding example of the purely descriptive use of the drawing of the city, coupled with inventory needs and territorial
control of the authoritarian monarchies. This Flemish painter was hired by Philip II to describe cities he dominated11,
assignment which resulted in a collection of topographical drawings of excellent accuracy.

Arias Sierra suggest that "the end of this line of representation (the urban panoramic view) is that of an idea of the city, something which could be
defined as a loss of value of urbanity as such" (Arias Sierra, P. 2003, p. 152).
10 The complete collection of Spanish engravingscan be found in "Cities of the Gold century: Spanish views of Anton Van den Wyngaerde, work
directed by R. Kagan.
11 Haverkamp-Begeman, E. 1986, p. 63.
9

175

MIC _ My Ideal City

Over time, this type of representations focused on the description and diffusion assume other values. Javier Maderuelo
exposes, as a paradigmatic example of this, the case of Toledo with the views painted by El Greco. In them, you can see
how the artist used the panorama of the city with different nuances and intentions, from the descriptive interpretation of
the whole ("View and Plan of Toledo, 1608-1610) to its use as a background for biblical or mythological scenes ("St.
Joseph with the baby" of 1597, or "Christ crucified with a view of Toledo" from 1605 to 1610). These latest developments
suggest the consolidation of the overall image of the city as a source of identity, associated with the "civic pride" of
citizens12. The Venetian "veduta" is a true development of this approach to create a pictorial genre closely related to this
attitude of appreciation for the city.
In many cases, general views of cities have been carried out continuously, shown from a series of widening points of
view, but in which certain locations tend to be featured recurrently. Such places of observation, sometimes used by
artists of the sixteenth century, are often highly appreciated by the population. During the mid-nineteenth century, Alfred
Guesdon would use air-balloons to produce bird's eye view lithographs depicting bourgeois and romantic cities13.
Romantic travellers will make new graphic interpretations of urban landscapes, accompanied by descriptions and
stories14.
This continuity in overall views, and the meaning that is popularly attributed to them, should allow overall images of cities
(according simultaneously to the dimensions of real view / representation and point of view/object of vision) to be fully
considered as heritage. Urban development has historically worked with landscape parameters: it is the case of the axis
of perspective and viewpoints or lookouts. Currently, in some cities urban planning reflects these factors, and advocates
for the protection of certain views, as in Segovia and Alhama de Granada15, Spain.
The study of these sequences of historical images can provide information on changes that have occurred in the
consideration of the city, its landmarks and significance. Richard Kagan has analyzed the evolution that the symbolic
milestone of Seville's Giralda has followed. The original Muslim minaret became the icon of the Christian city after the
conquest in 1248. Later, with the development of the Renaissance top led by Hernn Ruiz II (1566-1568), the tower will
complete its symbolic transformation, increasing its Catholic sense. Representations of the painters of the era, such as
Murillo, associate the building with a great religious charge. But from the nineteenth century, replicas began to appear all
over the world, which use the iconic nature of the tower, detached from those spiritual values: "With these replicas, we
see the magic of a tower that was able to be a initially a Muslim symbol, then Christian, after a city's image which is icon
of Spanish culture, a symbol of entertainment and pleasure, and image of progress".16

EnIn the case of Toledo, Maderuelo, relates the representations of El Greco with the transformation process of the imperial medieval city in
modern Renance city. Maderuelo, J. 2005.
13 The Spanish engravings of Guesdon can be found in Las ciudades espaolas a medidados del siglo XIX by Francisco Quirs Linares.
14 Regarding romatinc portarits, there is a selction in Los paisajes andaluces: hitos y miradas en los siglos XIX y XX, catalogue of an exposition of
2007.
15 The town hall of Alhama de Granada has published a work in which two old views of the city are compared: that of Hoefnagel and that of Van
den Wyngaerde. It is the publication Las vistas panormicas de Alhama de Hoefnagel y Van den Wyngaerde, by Andrs Garca Maldonado.
16 Conference of Richard Kagan titled La Torre Ambulante: La Giralda sevillana a travs del espacio y del tiempo. News published in the Noticia
El Correo de Andaluca web version, 22/11/2010.
12

176

MIC _ My Ideal City

In more recent times, this kind of general views have been used as a tourist promotion, ultimately contributing to their
popularity. The massive diffusion of urban panoramic postcards from the late nineteenth century is a clear example of
this. At the institutional level, for example, the Andalusian regional government released during the decade of 1990 a
series of posters representing the provincial capitals in the region, which showed a composition with the major
milestones and urban structures of each of them. These processes complete the transition from using the city's image as
a mere descriptive instrument or expression of power of certain minorities, to become a very popular and symbolic
dimension of the landscape that encourages public participation and offers vast opportunities to promote it. And which
also plays an important role of identity for people, "a clear and integrated physical setting [...] can provide the raw
material for the symbols and collective memories of group communication"17.

Figure 4. Constantina (Sevilla): relation between the overall urban image and the urban plan, with the identification of elements and areas with a
uniform texture. Observe the relation between the parallels and meridians drawn over the panoramic image with the mesh generated from the
point of view

Historical study of overall images is a useful tool for understanding the evolution of cities and the attitudes of
populations; facts that should be used to manage them responsibly today. But in a complementary manner, not only their
knowledge and appreciation should be promoted among the population, but also their participation in the assessment
and transformation of an urban landscape that is their living framework. It is therefore necessary to develop modes of

17

Lynch, K. 1976, p.12.

177

MIC _ My Ideal City

description which overcome the aforementioned split between the technical representation of the city and the approach
to the landscape through the great overall views.
Such has been the object of a recent study and experience of participation developed by the Centro de Estudios Paisaje
y Territorio, in Constantina (Sevilla), where a procedure has been carried out in this sense. The panoramic views of the
city are of great value in shaping local identity: they are used in family photographs on special occasions. To study them,
we have identified the main issuing points of such images, combining fieldwork and GIS tools. Two have been found,
one on each side of the valley where the population is based. On these focal points a more detailed analysis is
developed, taking panoramic images with an equi-rectangular projection. Thus, the distortion is uniform across the
image, and a grid of parallels and meridians corresponding to squares is obtained. From the point of observation, a polar
mesh can be drawn referred to the meridians of the image, establishing a direct relationship between the ground plan
and the overall image (Fig. 4).

3. Participation protocol: quality objectives and management areas

In addition to generating this system of representation and encouraging the contribution of the population to the
characterization and assessment of their overall images, it is necessary to define how those observations may be
transferred to urban planning. It is therefore interesting to use the definition of Quality Objectives proposed by the ELC,
"to define landscape quality objectives for the landscapes identified and assessed, after public consultation" (Section 1c).
In the studied case, these quality objectives refer to the structure of the overall image as well as the elements and areas
that are distinguished in them (both in the panoramic views as in the urban plan). The way to bring these issues to the
drafting of urban planning is the establishment of "management areas" which are areas that have a unitary visual
response in the configuration of overall views.
In some cases, these pieces take on equal importance as the overall image, establishing themselves as unitary images
of a neighbourhood or leading sector of the city. These interior units usually have very recognizable traits associated
with particular identities of the urban landscape, such as Albaicn of Granada, the Jewish quarter neighbourhood of
Cordoba or the disappeared Coracha neighbourhood in Malaga. This type of unitary images should also be considered
in detail in urban planning.
The study of overall images and the implementation of this fragmentation strategy18 carries, as a result the
characterization of the outstanding features in each city, and the possibility of distinguishing different structure types in
them19. These are elements that can be understood as attributes that are part of the panoramic views, and many times
take on a very striking impression.
This is the case landmarks (representative elements of the city), color (managed in recent times through the drafting of
"Color Plans Cards") or the textures and volumes. The silhouette (skyline) is one of the most characteristic formal
features of many overall images. This is a sensitive element, which building alterations and new construction can change

An example of this methodology can be found in Pardo Garca, S. (2010).

On the other hand, increasing the thoroughness with which the different components of the overall image are defined, can be positive to go
forward in the juridical indetermination for landscape that is mentioned by various authors (See Ochoa and Canales: Ver Ochoa y Canales: La
juridificacin del paisaje o de cmo convertir un criterio esencialmente esttico en un bien jurdico objetivable).
18
19

178

MIC _ My Ideal City

considerably (such as the controversy surrounding the Cajasol tower, Sevilla), and its treatment requires careful study of
the elevation and cross-section.
It is sometimes possible to see urban fronts built by large open spaces, which allows for panoramic views of "urban
facades", which acquire an important role in the shaping of the overall image. In this sense, the sea or lagoon fronts
should be highlighted (Malaga and Venice, respectively) or those that take place one or both sides of a river element
(like the two urban banks of the Guadalquivir River as it passes through Sevilla and Cordoba). Often this type of
structures (waterfronts) acquire a great symbolic weight, so that walks and viewpoints appear in order to enjoy the
generated landscape. Another very common type fronts are those that arise at the edges of the consolidated city,
materializing the boundary between urban and rural and which generally require a special attention and urban and
landscape treatment.
Our working protocol aims to develop knowledge regarding overall images and any attributes that can be distinguished
in them, and gathering the aspirations of the population establishing quality objectives which will be later developed
through management areas. We will continue to view the previous case of Constantina, in which in the overall image an
area of elongated land plots with a characteristic texture can be observed from the castle, which is identified both in the
panoramic view and in the urban plan. If people value their role as a prominent feature of these overall views, the quality
goal of keeping their inner emptiness and the elongated proportion of the plots would be established. These issues
would be reflected on a management area which includes in the ground plan the visual area corresponding to these
plots, and appropriate conservation conditions which are adequate and consistent with quality objectives would be
defined. Finally, these determinations could be transferred to planning through norms, guidelines or recommendations
prior to its drafting or developed afterwards, or as a requirement which conditions its approaches. Urban growth areas
could even be selected to avoid altering the views, considering the spaces that are visible from every issuing point (Fig.
5).

179

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 5. Constantina (Sevilla): Management areas and elements of the overall image and the General Urban Plan. Future growth can be to
the West of the city will affect notably rural areas which are important to the overall image of the city. The different management areas can also
be observed as well as relevant punctual elements or which should be transformed

180

MIC _ My Ideal City

4. Conclusions
Overall urban images have played a significant role in the construction of the visual and symbolic identity of many
European cities. The plastic beauty and iconographic power of these images, widely disseminated through art and
culture have contributed to shaping the landscape character of many historic centers, whose names are clearly related
to the formal features, significant landmarks and scenic compositions which are appreciated from certain viewpoints that
have been institutionalized through their use and social recognition. Nowadays, many of these overall images begin to
be considered as an important resource which should be managed in a specific manner, especially in situations where
the intensity and dynamics of urban processes can lead to the concealment or disfigurement of urban views with a high
heritage and landscape value.
In practice, this need to reconcile the preservation of images together with the specific logics of urban development
faces a double challenge: on the one hand, there is a certain conceptual and methodological failure to carry out a
systematic and joint survey of all the elements, characteristics, perceptions and social representations that are united
around these urban images, and secondly, it has remarkable difficulties to encode and translate the results of the
landscape assessment to the specific parameters and normative terms of planning tools on which the planning and
management of urban space ultimately rests.
This paper, which is part of a line of work of great interest for the Centro de Estudios Paisaje y Territorio, offers some of
the advances developed in recent years to overcome the above deficiencies and to establish a theoretical and
instrumental framework which allows the proper integration of overall images in urban planning. The definition of this
general reference framework, based on a consideration of urban views as an important heritage asset for towns and as
a resource on which to establish more sustainable development models, is performed through an initial conceptual
clarification regarding overall urban images and their basic constituent components (skyline, landmarks, facades,
borders...). Similarly, the procedures to transcribe in a more reliable and accurate way the fundamental characteristics of
these urban images to the plans and rules governing the urban system have begun to be developed in the areas that
give rise to such images.
These scientific and technical contributions, together with public participation processes for recognizing the values and
social meanings attributed to overall urban images, provide a solid basis for the treatment of resources and potentials
that are derived from the relationships established between the urban centres and their landscape surroundings.

181

MIC _ My Ideal City

References
ARIAS SIERRA, P. (2003). Periferias y nueva ciudad: el problema del paisaje en los procesos de dispersin urbana.
University of Sevilla.
BRAUN, G., Y HOGENBERG, F. (1572-1617). Civitates Orbis Terrarum (Cities of the World) Ed. 2008, Colonia, Ed.
Taschen.
CONSEJO DE EUROPA (2000). Convenio Europeo del Paisaje. Instrumento de Ratificacin en Espaa: BOE n31 de
5/2/2008, pp. 6259 a 6263.
FERNNDEZ LACOMBA ET AL (2007). Los paisajes andaluces: hitos y miradas en los siglos XIX y XX. Sevilla,
Council of Public works and Transport of Andalucia.
GARCA MALDONADO, A. (1999). Las vistas panormicas de Alhama de Hoefnagel y Van den Wyngaerde. Town hall
of Alhama de Granada.
HAVERKAMP-BEGEMAN, E. (1986). Las vistas de Espaa de Anton Van den Wyngaerde en Ciudades del Siglo de
Oro: Las vistas espaolas de Anton Van den Wyngaerde, pgs. 55 a 57.Madrid: Ed. el Viso.
KAGAN, R. (1986) Ciudades del Siglo de Oro: Las vistas espaolas de Anton Van den Wyngaerde. Madrid, Ed. el Viso.
, (1998) Imgenes urbanas del mundo hispnico, 1493-1780. Pamplona, Ed. el Viso
LYNCH, K. (1976) La imagen de la ciudad, Infinito, Buenos Aires
MADERUELO RASO, J. (2005). El Paisaje. Gnesis de un concepto. Madrid, Ed.Abada.
OCHOA, P. Y CANALES, F. (2010). La juridificacin del paisaje o de cmo convertir un criterio esencialmente esttico
en un bien jurdico objetivable en Prctica urbanstica: Revista mensual de urbanismo, n. 89, pgs. 61-87. Madrid, Ed.
la Ley.
PARDO GARCA, S. (2010). Aproximacin metodolgica a las vistas de los ncleos de poblacin: el caso de VlezMlaga en Cuadernos Geogrficos de la Universidad de Granada, n46, pgs.35-63. Granada, University of Granada,
Departament of geography.
QUIRS LINARES, F (1991). Las ciudades espaolas a mediados del siglo XIX. Valladolid, Ed. mbito.
VENEGAS MORENO, C. Y RODRGUEZ RODRGUEZ, J. (2002 a). Paisaje y Planeamiento Urbanstico, en Paisaje y
Ordenacin del Territorio, pgs. 145 a 152. Sevilla, Council of Public works and Transports of Andalucia.
, (2002 b) Valoracin de los paisajes monumentales. Una propuesta metodolgica para la integracin paisajstica de
los conjuntos histricos, en Paisaje y Ordenacin del Territorio, pgs. 153 a 165. Sevilla, Council of Public works and
Transports of Andalucia.
ZOIDO NARANJO, F. (2011). El paisaje un concepto til para relacionar esttica, tica y poltica, (pending publication).

182

MIC _ My Ideal City

The re-definition of collective image.

Between representation and politics in a northern Italian middle size city
Paola Pellegrini, University IUAV of Venice, Italy and University of Udine, Italy

In 2009 four researchers - the photo-historian Antonello Frongia, the photographer Andrea Pertoldeo, the urban designer
Paola Pellegrini and the architecture theorist Roberto Zancan - were commissioned by the young center-left politician
Alessandro Campera, the president of the suburban and industrial borough of Mantua, Italy, Circoscrizione Nord di
Mantova (25,000 inhabitants), to analyze and redefine the collective image of this neglected and misjudged section of
the city, a wide suburban area from the 60s and 70s where some controversial urban elements were located (300 ha of
industrial units using chemical agents: paper factory Burgo, refinery IES, chemistry factory Edison; a large social housing
development; the new motorway A22 Verona Brennero) and which is affected by postfordism and sprawl in recent years.
The joint project1 was part of the project called La periferia interiore2 by the politicians team, whose goal was to inform
citizens about the on-going transformations in the borough (mainly the public initiative Contratto di Quartiere II for the
requalification of the Lunetta neighbourhood social housing), involve citizens in some community activities and try a
process of social empowerment in order to improve life quality and urban dignity in this section of the city.

1. The joint project: premises and questions

The joint project, done in 18 months, had three major premises:
1. the Italian tradition of photographic campaigns promoted by public institutions since the 1980s (very famous examples
can be quoted: first of all the efforts of the Archivio dello Spazio of Milan Province 1987-1997 or Sezioni del paesaggio
Italiano, Stefano Boeri e Gabriele Basilico, 1997, promoted by Biennale di Venezia / VI Mostra Internazionale di
Architettura), placing great value in the hermeneutic potentialities of landscape photography as a tool of social and urban
investigation;
2. the conventional notion of suburbia as a place of deprivation and deterioration of the environment and life quality (as
meant in the Italian language suburbia = periferia3);
3. the idea that images make good political propaganda.
The joint project subjected to criticism these major premises and put some questions at the core of the work: is the

The interior suburbia; the project had the patronage of Universit IUAV di Venezia and published the book La periferia interiore, racconti della
periferia nord di Mantova, edited by Paola Pellegrini, Quodlibet Macerata, 2009, with texts by Antonello Frongia, Paola Pellegrini, Roberto Zancan,
photos by Andrea Pertoldeo.
2 www.laperiferiainteriore.it
3 From Treccani dictionary: Linsieme dei quartieri di una citt pi lontani dal centro; frequente la locuzuzione di periferia, che oltre a indicare la
collocazione nel tessuto urbano, aggiunge spesso una connotazione riduttiva, di squallore e desolazione.
1

183

MIC _ My Ideal City

concept of periphery still useful to understand current reality and changes in the fragmented urban fabric of small cities
such as Mantua? How can photography and city planning research cooperate to investigate the relationship between the
production and the representation of contemporary landscapes? Can photographic and verbal descriptions contribute to
our understanding of ordinary landscapes? What role can landscape images have in the definition of political identities?
In order to explore the answers to these questions the joint project stimulated new representations and reflections upon
the borough by means of:
- a photographic campaign by Andrea Pertoldeo exploring the ordinary spaces of everyday life, thus eschewing the
conventional iconography of the suburbia challenged by rapid social change, mass-mediatization and globalization,
different models of preferred residential environments;
- a three day video workshop Istantanee in movimento, una storia di famiglia led by Roberto Zancan exploring how
local families move, have fun, where meet, what buy, what think of their living environment;
- the production of citizens images
- developed and tested during a writing seminar Frammenti di periferia led by Paola Pellegrini - in which local
inhabitants narrated in texts their past and present experience of the city and its suburban territory, their personal
judgement on how it was built and how it should have been and could be;
- developed and tested during a photography seminar La periferia interiore led by Andrea Pertoldeo - in which
some local not professional photographers highlighted some parts in the suburban city they recognized as
representative.
- urban investigation and analysis and the mutual interaction between them and photographic representation, meant as
parallel narratives.
- discussion of the results and the ways to spread them in Mantua with the politician and his team.
Thus various types of image-production were activated in parallel, as a way to re-define collective image and to reflect
upon the relationship between urban spaces and images: documentary photography, urban studies, citizens views.

2. In praise of suburbia for a new concept

The aim of the joint project was not to contribute to give shape to a new ideal city, aim not included in the general
program La periferia interiore, but to stimulate new concepts of-for the city itself, more exactly of-for suburbia and its
relation with the city centre, that in Mantua is extremely relevant for its historic and artistic value (and economic in real
estate) and therefore overwhelming. The idea is that only if local inhabitants and all of the citizens abandon prejudices
and acquire a better knowledge and cognition of the borough and its essential role in the city it is possible to start to plan
a better future for the whole community and overcome exclusion, deficiency and disparity.
The difference and separation, in fact, between centre and northern suburban territory in Mantua is evident and sharp
first of all because of the geography, more than in other cities where hybridization and confusion is most frequent; two
different urban landscapes face one another4: on the right side of the Mincio lakes the town from the Renaissance, a
continuous profile of monuments protected by UNESCO, an ideal, abstract, purified construction, on the other side the
new town, unhomogeneous and discontinuous, never represented, which received what could not find a proper place in
the old one: large industries, infrastructures and social housing, but also single family houses and little production sheds
in recent years. But it is not only a problem of separation and distance: the northern borough is generally thought of as
periferia for the lack of what could give it an urban status (short history, absence of public facilities, difficult mobility,

ROSSI A., Architetture padane, Edizioni Panini, Modena 1984.

184

MIC _ My Ideal City

project not developed, promises evaded, ), the apparent marginality, the persistence of some 70s conditions and
fabric5; it is not only a geographic condition, but mainly a symbolic and cultural one.

Figure 1. Mantua, Circoscrizione Nord. Fragments of suburbia

But generally speaking suburbia - periferia can be considered a meaningless stereotype today in the contemporary city
because twin concepts such as centre / marginal, close / distant, inside / outside faded away; as Cacciari6 asserts the
city is everywhere, so there is no city anymore, polarities can be anywhere in a territory experienced as isomorphous
and made by the cognitive maps of its inhabitants7; so the term suburbia periferia is useless to describe reality.
Furthermore a praise of periferia8 should be pronounced because it is the place of faint identity and constant mutation,

The project itself La periferia interiore defined the area as periferia.

CACCIARI M., La citt, note per un lessico socio-filosofico, a cura di Paolo Perulli e Matteo Vegetti, Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, 2004
introduction. Many other books could be quoted.
7 PERULLI P., Visioni di citt, le forme del mondo spaziale, Einaudi, Torino 2009, p. 5.
8 RULLANI E., La citt infinita: spazio e trama della modernit riflessiva, in La citt infinita, a cura di Aldo Bonomi e Alberto Abruzzese, Bruno
Mondadori, Milano 2004.
5
6

185

MIC _ My Ideal City

which is the characteristics of postmodernity9, and it is the only place where transformation and new possibilities can
happen thanks to the absence of an overwhelming history and the presence of many voids and fragments (terrains
vagues of concept and of fabric).
So is the term periferia, correlated to the Modern city, still useful to define the northern borough of Mantua? Partially.
Some features of the traditional periferia remain with their burden10 especially heavy industries and working class and a general slowness in transformation must be noted especially in the sprawl phenomena and postfordism, while
some other similar suburban cases seem to have had a quicker dynamic recently in turning into tertiary11 sector
dispersed cities; some other features are lost, because new ex-urban centralities were built (the core with the office
campus, the shopping mall, the Arena), the city centre is not an everyday destination and proximity networks are loosen.

Figure 2. Comparison of industrial areas: from top left clockwise Mantua, Brescia, Modena, Verona, Reggio Emilia, Cremona

The new concept should arise from the borough citizens (or they should be helped interiorizing it) and therefore the goal
was to tell and represent a section of the city never represented before and to enlarge the participation of citizens in the
construction of the idea of the city; in fact in our pop culture if a place is not represented and does not make people talk it
does not really exists.

LYOTARD J. F., La condizione postmoderna, rapporto sul sapere, Feltrinelli, Milano 1982; BAUMAN Z., La societ dellincertezza, Il Mulino,
Bologna 1999; KOOLHAAS R., BOERI S. et al., Mutations, ACTAR, Barcelona 2001.
10 for example: Carlo BOVINI, La strage del petrolchimico, in La Repubblica, 5 aprile 2001; Stefano BOERI, Arcipelago della anti-citt, in Il Sole
24 ore, 13 novembre 2005.
11 Luciano GALLINO, La scomparsa dellItalia Industriale, Einaudi, Torino 2003 p. 42.
9

186

MIC _ My Ideal City

3. Partecipation, popular and cultured formae urbis

Participants offered their long-distance gaze in the past12 on how urban fabric was transformed, how people defined a
new geography of actions and mobility, how natural areas shifted and disappeared. Not often they went beyond criticism
of what done wrong after the second world war or beyond nostalgia of what the territory was and, though the possibility
to work out new collective actions and practices has always been the background of the talks, it was extremely difficult to
think of what could be ideal today the glance at the future was either with proposals too small to re-configure the city
new bike paths or idea too radical to be accepted by politicians stop speculation.
We noticed that the potentialities of urban design were not in peoples mind but they do know what they do not like:
people criticized forms of design aimed at accommodating superimposed, hetero-normative meanings of living together
such as the Modern Movement heritage that gave shape in Mantua to the Lunetta social housing neighbourhood, a
place that turns its inhabitants and those who live in the borough into victims of a strongly stigmatized architectural
identity assumed as a synonym of poverty and publicly imposed segregation. For this reason they welcomed the
demolition of some slabs and their substitution with small palazzine and as soon as they can afford it they buy a
detached or semi detached house into the countryside or re-enter in the historical centre, the best ever winning model of
popular formae urbis. In fact, even though the borough is composed by different parts, 2 little old villages remain and
some parts of the borough are made of nice single family houses from the 50 60, it is judged as an ugly, indefinite,
congested space in between, included and compressed between the centre and the new rural much designed
dispersed settlements. Reality got rid of what remained of avant garde elitarism and the established values of
Architecture that found space in Circoscrizione Nord and caught what people seem to desire and need, it does not
matter if judged picturesque, vernacular, ugly and ordinary, barbarian

4. Politics reaction
Participants asserted his/her own micro-politics of desire, but in most cases the self-affirmation was not for the
individual but for the community, in order to re-gain the dimension of living together, lost forever for some, still alive and
to be re-gained for others. Living together means to be political and participants claimed to be listened and communicate
to a larger audience their texts and photos.
The project showed, yet, that the relation of citys political agenda with participatory process results as well as with
hermeneutic potentialities of landscape photography remains contradictory. The promoter, in fact, was satisfied with the
joint project until, eventually, the project turned out to be part of a larger political agenda, involving the presidents public
image as an advocate for the local community and his candidacy for higher office in the upcoming election of Mantuas
city council; in this changed condition the political usefulness of this investigation became doubtful and the initial attitude
- to face problems and obsolete stereotypes the politician choose to gain a better understanding of the borough and give
voice to the citizens was abandoned: criticism or photos judged too harsh were not allowed to gain place outside the
participation process (apart from the project web-page). For this reason the citys reaction to the investigation was not
fostered.

Unfortunatly mainly aged people took active part to the process, for a problem of time and availability to work; to reach families and young people
it was necessary to dig them out.

12

187

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 3. Definition of photos sequences

5. Descriptive and narrative models of urban form

Historically documentary photography has proved a good investment for local administrators, but its real utility for
understanding contemporary cities is still unclear.
Photos cannot tell the comprehensive story of the city, but show in detail and with extreme precision fragments of many
different possible stories. The plot involving socio-economic, cultural, historic, spatial, planning aspects - should be
narrated by the urban analyst / designer and should be re-constructed by those citizens who are open to discover with
new surprise and critical examination their everyday places. But so far in Italy this effort to produce a civic and urban
photographic art failed13 and it proved to be vain that landscape photography could change established collective images
and perception of social actors and investors. The main risk is that photographic campaigns - expression of a empiric
and phenomenological as well as artistic and formal knowledge is meant as a pseudo-cognitive type of urban
research, creating the illusion of a direct link between the photographer, the citizens, the citys administrators, and the
urban analyst, while in fact granting each actor the possibility to project a different agenda on the pictures themselves.
While the fiction of urban photography as a complex open work suits every actor, the straightforwardness of
photographic representation (used in order to reduce artisticity) might turn into a repetition of what is banal and
insignificant. In Mantua, to avoid this risk, the photographer observed the territory both as an aesthetic object and an
urban text and tried to interact with expert and not-expert knowledge.

13 FRONGIA A., Hic sunt leones. Fotografia di periferia e sguardo marginale in La periferia interiore, racconti della periferia nord di Mantova, edited
by Paola Pellegrini, Quodlibet, Macerata 2009 p. 87.

188

MIC _ My Ideal City

The interaction between the photographer and the urban analyst produced a possible common reading of the pictures
and this way of the territory, divided into themes of further investigation, but was not fully accomplished, despite frequent
exchanges and a constant attempt to cross-verify the partial results of the investigation. The project developed in
Mantua, from the very beginning not intended as a definitive result, was a critical test on the major premises and working
conditions which in turn produced further questions.

Figure 4. Hic sunt canes. One of the selected photos

189

MIC _ My Ideal City

The City and its Vision.

The Collapse of Urban Representation: Migrants Mapping Milan
Nausica Pezzoni, Polytechnic of Milan

There is no way to remove the observer us from our perception of the world.
S. Hawking, L. Mlodinow, The (shifty) theory of the whole

1. Introduction
This paper is the result of an empirical research on mapping Milan through a sample of a hundred migrants, interviewed during
the first period of their stay in the city.
The research explored the construction of a new urban imagery by transitory populations which are increasingly inhabiting the
contemporary city.

190

MIC _ My Ideal City

The study was based on the observation and the analysis of the relationships that the transitory populations, especially
migrants, have with the city: the uncoded forms of living within the contemporary city and the way the inhabitants, who are not
rooted within the city, occupy the urban spaces. Migrants arriving from elsewhere need to build a new home often being
without a real house, and therefore they are forced to invent a home in areas unappropriated for habitation. Also the places in
Milan transformed by migrants to carry out public activities that are uncovered by the urban project are observed: the square in
front of the Central Station that on Sunday becomes a meeting place for foreigners; the car park of Cascina Gobba that
becomes the reference point for Eastern Europe people to send or receive parcels and to stage a market for local products; the
square of the Steam Plant - a theatre in a tent in an area of reclaimed industrial buildings that becomes a place of prayer for
the Muslim population during the feast for the end of Ramadan.
A deconstruction of the meaning of place and a reconstruction through new interpretations and new uses takes place in this
appropriation of urban public spaces, interpreted and used in different ways for which they were designed. This process also
generates new forms of the city.
From the observation of these processes that speak about the deconstruction and reconstruction of the physical form of the
city, the research proposes a transition to the deconstruction and disruption in the representation of the city.
It was proposed to move from the traditional urban representation in a technical map, to an interpretive map of the city, and
more precisely, to the mental maps drawn by people recently arrived in Milan, and who are trying to get their bearings in the
new city.

2. Representing the City of Migrants

Can it be accepted that knowledge is based on the exclusion of the knowing subject, that thought is based on the exclusion of
the thinking subject, and that the subject is excluded from the construction of the object? (Morin, 1977)1
As such, the hypothesis of the research is that the rethinking of the city and trying to include a planning of transitional living
cannot be separated from the observation and experience of the people who live and inhabit the condition of transiency.
In the representation of the city as expressed by migrants, there could emerge indications about the perceptions of urban
landscape specific to the observers who see it from a 'mobile', not rooted and unpredictable point of view. This is useful to
guide city planning research through uncoded approaches in regards to services and urban living, which are traditionally based
on an assumption of permanence.
The inclusion of the migrants point of view is necessary to understand what it means, for those who arrive in a new town, to
inhabit and come to know it; therefore, it is the intention to listen to people who are guests of the new city and who at the
same time are architects of its transformation.
In the stories of the migration experience, which often accompany the studies on the living conditions of the immigrants in our
cities, their point of view is included in the form of narration, which reports their own complex history of travel, meetings,
abandonments, difficulties in communication and integration and also accommodation. In these stories the interaction with the
city as a living object emerges in the folds of the narrative, within the lines of the relationships with the people and their

Translation by the author.

191

MIC _ My Ideal City

problems of access and survival. This interaction is not the subject of an independent consideration but is considered as part of
the whole.
However, if we ask to someone coming from another part of the world what their relationship with our city is and what the city
should be according to their point of view, we discover that for them it is a very abstract question, which is difficult to
understand, not only due to reasons of language, but above all, for the analytical approach and the synthesis process that it
requires. What the city is and what are the characteristics of living the first landfall in a new city, is a question with many facets
and layers that cannot be codified.
There must be an element of mediation in order to generate a debate around the relevant characteristics of this new inhabiting.
The representation of the migrants city is the instrument identified to investigate this specific and unknown interaction between
the new inhabitants and the city. It is the choice of a way of working to define the contours of a transitional urban living yet
unexplored but nevertheless very common among migrant populations, and as such very significant in determining
developments for the future relationship between them and the city.
The representation of the city is intended as a gesture of imaginative thinking by the persons who are preparing to tell their own
idea / experience of the city: through the act of representing, migrants are encouraged to take a creative point of observation,
using a graphic representation as their main medium of expression.

192

MIC _ My Ideal City

3. How does a stranger build an image of a new city?2

A representation which is able to provide information on the first relationship established between the migrants and the city
should above all contain the elements that these new inhabitants consider most important in their interaction with the urban
space. Tracking these elements in each persons experience of the city - disorienting, fragmentary, full of new impressions and
images, as always happens when you come in contact with an unknown environment - can be difficult and can prompt the
imagining of a chaotic set or the failure of the identification of any precise elements.
Therefore it was decided to take advantage of a further element of mediation. The participants were asked to think about their
experience of the city through some elements they considered representative of the main actions which demonstrated
knowledge of the city. This approach derives from the most authoritative source in the exploration of the significance of places
through direct experience of the inhabitants, "The image of the city" by Kevin Lynch.
In Directions for Future Research, Kevin Lynch suggests some directions to be pursued in his studies of the image of the city:
As planning becomes a world-wide discipline, and planners are drawn into the business of making plans for people of other
countries, it becomes necessary to make sure that what has been found in America is not simply a derivation of local culture.
How does an Indian look at his city, or an Italian? ()
If cities are to be used by many groups of people, then it is important to understand how the different major groups tend to
image their surroundings. ()

(Lynch, 1960).

193

MIC _ My Ideal City

The present studies have been confined to images as they exist at one point of time. We would understand them far better if
we knew how they develop: how does a stranger build an image of a new city; how does a child develop his image of the
world? How can such images be taught or communicated; what forms are most suitable for image development? A city must
have both an obvious structure that can be grasped immediately and also a potential structure which will allow one gradually to
construct a more complex and comprehensive picture.(Lynch, 1960).
These suggestions provide an opportunity to continue the work of Lynch, by investigating "how does a stranger build an image
of a new city", and through his categories of reading the city as key elements on which the migrants representation of the city is
founded.
Lynch's study is therefore taken both as a conceptual and methodological reference. As a conceptual reference the
contemporary city model of analysis has been assumed. This model attributes a decisive and structural role to the observation
of the people have a direct stake in the project of the city. As a methodological reference, its research setting based on the
classification of elements characterizing the experience of the city has been followed.
The intention of the analysis is transformed: Lynch aims to bring out the imageability of the city that quality in a physical
object which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given observer. It is that shape, color, or arrangement
which facilitates the making of vividly identified, powerfully structured, highly useful mental image of the environment" (Lynch,
1960) -, in the present work on the representation of the migrants city, instead, the topic is the relationship with the city. The
intention is to highlight the elements which migrants first relate with, as well as those which better lend themselves to the
creation of an image of the city for people who are trying to get their bearings.

Kevin Lynch: The city image and its elements

Following the five elements with which Lynch classifies the contents related to the physical forms of the city are presented.
1. Paths: Paths are the channels along which the observer customarily, occasionally or potentially moves. They may be
streets, walk ways, transit lines, canals, railroads. For many people, these are the predominant elements in their image.
People observe the city while moving through it, and along these paths the other environmental elements are arranged
and related.
2. Edges: Edges are the linear elements not used or considered as paths by the observer. They are the boundaries between
two phases, linear breaks in continuity: shores, railroad curs, edges of development, walls. They are lateral references
rather than coordinate axis. Such edges may be barriers, more or less penetrable, which close one region off from
another, or they may be seams, lines along which two regions are related and joined together. These edge elements,
although probably not as dominant as paths, are for many people important organizing features, particularly in the role of
holding together generalized areas, as in the outline of a city by water or wall.
3. Districts: Districts are the medium-to-large sections of the city, conceiving of as having two-dimensional extent, which the
observer mentally enters inside of, and which are recognizable as having some common, identified character. Always
identifiable from the inside, they are also used for exterior reference if visible from the outside. Most people structure their

194

MIC _ My Ideal City

city to some extent in this way, with individual differences as to whether paths or districts are the dominant elements. It
seems to depend not only upon the individual but also upon the given city.
4. Nodes: Nodes are points, the strategic spots in a city into which an observer can enter, and which are the intensive foci to
and from he is traveling. They may be primarily junctions, places of a break in transportation, a crossing or convergence of
paths, moments of shift from one structure to another. Or the nodes may be simply concentrations, which gain their
importance from being the condensation of some use or physical character, as a street-corner hangout or an enclosed
square. Some of these concentrations nodes are the focus and epitome of a district, over which their influence radiates
and of which they stand as a symbol. They may be called cores. Many nodes, of course, partake of the nature of both
junctures and concentrations. The concept of node is related to the concept of path, since junctions are typically the
convergence of paths, events on the journey. It is similarly related to the concept of district, since cores are typically the
intensive foci of districts, their polarizing center. In any event, some nodal points are to be found in almost every image,
and in certain cases they may be the dominant feature.
5. Landmarks: Landmarks are another type of point-reference, but in this case the observer does not enter within them, they
are external. They are usually a rather simply defined physical object: building, sign, store or mountain. Their use involves
the singling out of one element from a host of possibilities. Some landmarks are distant ones, typically seen from many
angles and distances, over the tops of smaller elements, and used as radial references. They may be within the city or at
such a distance that for all practical purposes they symbolize a constant direction. Such are isolated towers, golden
domes, great hills. Even a mobile point, like the sun, whose motion is sufficiently slow and regular, may be employed.
Other landmarks are primarily local, being visible only in restrict localities and from certain approaches. These are the
innumerable signs, store fronts, trees, doorknobs, and other urban detail, which fill in the image of most observers. They
are frequently used clues of identity and even of structure, and seem to be increasingly relied upon as a journey becomes
more and more familiar (Lynch, 1960).

The transposition of Lynch categories for transitory inhabitants

The re-reading of the elements introduced by Lynch, is developed by tuning them to the migrants specific condition within the
contemporary city; a condition where the perception of place aims to find an orientation in the urban landscape, rather than
examining the legibility of the urban structure.
-

Paths: They are the usual movements in the city, the most frequently used paths by foot or public transportation. As
Lynch defined, paths are intended as "channels along which the observer moves," but only "customarily" and not
"potentially", since the element of interest is not what is perceived as a path, but what is usually used as such.

Boundaries: It is the transposition of the category of "edges" which is kept in its meaning of barrier, of break in the
continuity, as boundaries between two phases, not meant as physical boundaries, "linear elements not used or
considered as paths by the observer, but elements of border between a known (or knowable) city and a city
considered off limits, where the migrant doesnt go or feels he cannot go; these places are considered inaccessible
places, impenetrable spaces, the imaginary walls of the city.

195

MIC _ My Ideal City

Living Spaces: These are the places where the migrant lives and has lived since his arrival in Milan; for it is the
phase that precedes any rootedness, often these are not places designed to live in. As the Lynchs category of
"districts, these are places where "the observer mentally enters inside of"; the spaces of everyday transient
experience.

Nodes: They are the most popular places, those where the main activities take place and where you meet other
people, "intense foci", as defined by Lynch, not because of their strategic position ("typically the convergence of paths,
events on the journey) but because they are points of aggregation that "gain their importance from being the
condensation of some use or physical character" according to a meaning that does not concern the identifiability of
the physical form, but that concerns the importance assigned to the nature of activities which are carried out in that
place.

Landmarks: These are the places of reference, which identify the city or which are used to get ones bearing in the
city; they have the same meaning of the Lynchs category "Landmarks" as punctual elements and are used as marks
of identity, the more recognizable as their visual importance is coincident with the symbolic one.

Map by Kairucca Javed, AFGHANISTAN

196

MIC _ My Ideal City

Map by Ako Atikossie, TOGO

Map by Murat Aydin, TURCHIA

4. The work Method

The investigation of the relationship between the city and the transitory populations through the drawing of mind maps, requires
the definition of a frame within this type of representation of the city would have returned significant information in order to
understand which is - how it is lived and represented - the transitory living.

Sample of interviewees
We proceeded first to define what types of migrant populations might respond to the requirement of transience. They have
been declared belonging to the category of 'transitory populations' all those persons who had not yet found a stable living
197

MIC _ My Ideal City

arrangement. Based on this classification, the sample of interviewees includes people from all over the world, arrived in Milan
for different reasons and through different migratory routes; their common characteristic was that they had not yet been
established in the city. Thus they could propose a representation of city from a 'mobile' point of view, due to a housing
condition marked by instability.
In addition to this predominant group of 'transitory population', it was identified a secondary type, composed by students of
architecture and urbanism who had been staying in Milan for less than 3 months, interviewed in the classrooms of the
University: they represent the 'technical expert' seeing, although estranged, to the city, which is relevant to know another type
of 'first access' requests - the expression of another level of needs, or another meaning attributed to the reception - and at the
same time to study the specific representation of who is familiar with the instruments of 'representing' and uses it to express
the strangeness.
The third category is made up of people 'no longer in transit', who arrived in Milan a few years ago: they have a better
understanding of the city and yet are witnesses of a recent experience of immigration and landfall. In representing the city,
these people return us the process of 'learning' about it, a process developed from their arrival to the current date; they draw
paths, boundaries, living spaces, nodes, landmarks on the basis of a critical eye. This observation point, just after that one of
transience, allows to analyze the transition from a first 'layer' of knowledge and enjoyment of the city, composed of the
elements identified by those persons who are trying to get their bearings, in a more conscious layer, which elements are the
result of a selection occurred after a period of relationship with the different urban spaces.

Instruments
The instruments used for each interview are: a sheet of A4 paper, pens, crayons and markers, which are left on the table
available to the interviewee who can choose the most appropriate graphical tools to draw up his map. On the back of the map,
they are asked to write their name, age, country of origin - and whether the original house is in a city or in the country - and the
elapsed time from their arrival in Milan.
In addition to materials for the representation of this mental map, a voice recorder is used, and, when there are favorable
conditions, a camera, in order to get a testimony of the implementation process of the design: this further seeing, or voice,
allows to observe, in addition to the final product, the act of representing, the way to approach an interpretation of the city that
does propose preconceived answers but involves in a more active, self-reflexive action and a shift from imagining to
representing. These are a series of acts often explained in the interview associated with the drawing and which are interesting
as a further expression of seeking a relationship with the city.

Sites of exploration
The sites considered representative of the migrants city, identified in order to meet the 'transitory populations' to be
interviewed, were selected defining the main activities related to the services of first access to the city, and for each one it has
been analyzed a reference space.
It was chosen the Help Center of the City of Milan at the Central Station with regard to the 'orienting' activity, where they are
given to newly arrived immigrants the 'very first access' information on the city.
198

MIC _ My Ideal City

For the 'sleeping' activity, we have analyzed different types of spaces that offer night hospitality: a public dormitory for the first
reception service in a municipal structure, the House of Charity for the service first and second shelter in a structure of a
religious foundation, the Porta Romana railway station as an example of informal housing.
With regard to 'eating', the table of the San Francesco Foundation was chosen, being the most popular in Milan.
Regarding the help for legal assistance, reference has been made to the Naga, a volunteer association that promotes and
protects the rights of foreign people, and the Centre Naga Har, that in addition to providing legal and social assistance to
asylum seekers and refugees, contains a library, a classroom where classes are held in Italian, a lounge with TV, and that for
these specific functions has been chosen as the site representative of the 'joining' activity.
With regard to health services, the clinic of the Fratelli di San Francesco Foundation has been chosen as a center of
reference for immigrants who seek medical care in several disciplines: general medicine, psychiatry, gynecology,
ophthalmology, ENT, dermatology, dentistry and other.
Moreover some sites have been identified as significant for the considerable presence of immigrants in certain moments of the
week: the square in front of the Central Station on Sunday afternoon, the market behind the subway station of Cascina Gobba
and some urban parks on weekends.

5. Conclusions
The research hypothesis, which this work is based on, is that the seeing of migrants is a factor of fundamental knowledge to
be able to build a city plan that is truly inclusive of the instances that they introduce.
In order to find a suitable instrument to contain the representation of the migrants city, an initial question was asked: Do we
choose a cartographic, technical basis of the urban area, on which participants could track their representation of the city,
indicating the most important landmarks, paths, nodes in the process of knowledge of the city, or provide them with a blank
sheet of paper where they could draw the city ex novo?
We opted for this second option, to allow a free choice of urban objects and how to represent them. From the variety of
interpretations that are possible to give to the urban space, original information about the use of city environments and the
meanings assigned to each of its components could be obtained; moreover, the use of the blank paper was intended as an
invitation to draw a different and more complex map that could reveal the 'invisible landscape' inhabited by migrants in their
first approach to the city.
This hypothesis refers to Farinellis critical considerations on the function of mapping in the context of geographical knowledge,
where the representation itself is assigned the role of producer of a particular vision of reality, in contrast to a scientific,
objectifying vision, which believes the map is a reflection of reality.
() Every map is primarily a plan for the world, as the various meanings of the Anglo-Saxon word plan still testifies, and the
project of every map is to transform - playing in advance, that is preceding it - the face of the earth in its own image and
likeness." (Farinelli, 1992)3
To give up a topographic support to represent the migrants city, would mean to give up an observation of reality that wants to
be objective and offer an observation where the observer's seeing is a constitutive part of the observed field.
3

Translation by the author.

199

MIC _ My Ideal City

Another topography, which is not limited to the morphological appearance of urban objects, and that even apart from that, may
include depictions of the insurgent city4, which means to build a dematerialized representation of the city where life practices
of the new citizens take place along with the multiplicity of points of view that each new citizen brings to the city.
Through the representation of the city by migrants, the vision that they bring to the territory in which they inhabit is investigated;
a vision which in turn is the carrier of the culture of origin that influences the observation and representation of the landfall city.
Mental maps made by migrants bring to the surface the implicit transformative project underlying a description of the city "in its
own image and likeness5.

References
Ambrosini M., Abbatecola E., 2004, Immigrazione e metropoli. Un confronto europeo, Franco Angeli, Milano.
Ambrosini M., 2005, Sociologia delle migrazioni, il Mulino, Bologna.
Agustoni A., Alietti A., 2009, Societ urbane e convivenza interetnica. Vita quotidiana e rappresentazioni degli immigrati in un
quartiere di Milano, Franco Angeli, Milano.
Attili G., 2008, Rappresentare la citt dei migranti: storie di vita e pianificazione urbana, Jaka Book, Milano.
Balducci A., Fedeli V. (a cura di), 2007, I territori della citt in trasformazione. Tattiche e percorsi di ricerca, Franco Angeli,
Milano.
Caliceti G., 2010, Italiani, per esempio. LItalia vista dai bambini immigrati, Feltrinelli, Milano.
Caponio T., 2006, Citt italiane e immigrazione, Il Mulino, Bologna.
Chambers I., 1996, Paesaggi migratori. Cultura e identit nellepoca postcoloniale, Costa & Nolan, Genova.
Farinelli F., 1992, I segni del mondo. Immagine cartografica e discorso cartografico in et moderna, La Nuova Italia, Scandicci
(FI).
Farinelli F., 2009, La crisi della ragione cartografica, Einaudi, Torino.
Fiorani E., 2005, I panorami del contemporaneo, Lupetti, Milano.
Gabellini P., 2010, Fare urbanistica. Esperienze, comunicazione, memoria, Carrocci, Roma.
Gabellini P., 1996, Il disegno urbanistico, La Nuova Italia Scientifica, Roma.
Grandi F., 2008, Immigrazione e dimensione locale. Strumenti per l'analisi dei processi inclusivi, Franco Angeli, Milano.
Lonni A., 2003, Immigrati, Bruno Mondadori, Milano.
Lynch K., 1960, The image of the city, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Lynch K., 1981, Il senso del territorio, il Saggiatore, Milano.
Morin E., 1977, Il Metodo Vol I. La natura della natura, ed. it. 2001, Cortina, Milano.
Multiplicity.lab, 2007, Milano cronache dellabitare, Bruno Mondadori, Pavia.
Paba G., 2004, Insurgent City. Topografia di unaltra Firenze, in Urbanistica n. 123, Milano.
Pasqui G., 2009, Citt, popolazioni, politiche, Jaka Book, Milano.
Sandercock L., Attili G., 2010, Multimedia Explorations in Urban Policy and Planning, Urban and Landscape Perspectives,
Vol.7.
Tosi A., 1994, Abitanti. Le nuove strategie dellazione abitativa, Il Mulino, Bologna.
Tosi A., 1993, Immigrati e senza casa. I problemi, i progetti e le politiche, Franco Angeli, Milano.
Tosi M.C. (a cura di), 2006, Di cosa parliamo quando parliamo di urbanistica?, Meltemi, Roma.
Valtolina G.G. (a cura di), 2010, Famiglie immigrate e inclusione sociale: i servizi e il territorio, ISMU, Milano.
Vicari Haddock S., 2004, La citt contemporanea, Il Mulino, Bologna.

4 Spaces of insurgent citizenship are called, by James Holston, "the spaces delivered from the planned and modern dominion of the city: the land of
homeless, migrant networks, gays neighborhoods, self-made suburbs (...). Holston considered insurgent those spaces where practices take place that
disturb the consolidated narratives of the contemporary city". In an article entitled Insurgent City. Topography of another Florence, G. Paba traces the
interpretations, from Sandercock to Geddes to Mumford, of the word insurgent, to explain the research in which "the object of representation must be
exactly the boiling world of the insurgent city (...). The materials to represent were then made not by objects, but by weaving of human relationships, new
intersubjective relationships and their difficult and controversial interaction with the morphological and organizational structure of the city".( Paba G., 2004).
5 (Farinelli, 1992).

200

MIC _ My Ideal City

Expansion and future of the European city

Livio Sacchi, G. DAnnunzio University, Chieti-Pescara

Over 50% of the worlds population now lives in a city. In recent years there has been much talk of the fact that the
number of people living in cities has surpassed that of those living in rural areas, of the search to resolve problems of
uninterrupted continuity, of a watershed without historic precedents: with a great deal of fanfare, they beginning of a new
urban era was announced. Sometime around 1900, little more than a century ago, the urban population was a mere
10%; in 2050 estimates place this number at 75%. In 2003, the United Nations estimated the number of urban dwellers
at 3 billion, a figure that is expected to reach 5 billion in 2030; the rural population, instead, is expected to drop from 3.3
to 3.2 billion during the same period. These numbers need no comment and are even more astonishing if we think of the
progressive digitalisation of every human activity that, for the vast majority, should have rendered our effective location
on the Earth progressively more indifferent, or at least inverted the trend towards urbanisation. It is now clear that the
expansion of the city and the challenges that it presents us with coincide, for the most part, with the general problems
faced by mankind and the planet: shelter, employment, social interaction and public space, globalisation, mobility and
migratory flows, social segregation and sustainability. These are all familiar questions that have been discussed at great
length; less clear, however, are the answers that we are asked to provide. As in many other fields, the critical discussion
of the expansion of the city and, more in general, its future, appears to be divided between those who foresee terrifying
situations and those, on the other hand, who adopt tones of enthusiastic hopefulness. Yet no one, not even those who
opt for a healthy middle-of-the-road position, can avoid noticing that vertiginous processes of contemporary expansion
and possible future developments appear, in many cases, to hint at the end of the very historical idea of the city. On the
one hand, the latter appears unsuitable to the new forms of particular geographic areas, primarily East Asia; on the other
hand, the very notion of progress tied to the expansion of the city, once held to be positive, more often than not
assumes highly negative connotations: one of the most important contemporary architects, Renzo Piano, has stated that
our century has led to the denigration of the city: this great invention of mankind. We have polluted its positive values,
altered the mixture of functions on which it is founded; the very idea of social interaction that embodies its distinctive
character and its architectural quality. The quality of the built environment, inherited from the past, now survives only with
great difficulty, suffocated and denatured in our urban centres. When Piano speaks of our urban centres, he is
referring, in general, to the Western city and, in particular, to the European city. What is more, he suggests a solution:
instead of continuing to explode the city, we must complete its fabric. This is already an interesting and acceptable idea
of the concept of unlimited growth: the idea of sustainable growth, by which the peripheries can be transformed into

201

MIC _ My Ideal City

cities. This is the true wager for the next fifty years1. It is possible, however, that the situation is a little more complex.
Not all urban areas are growing; there are more than a few so-called shrinking cities with consistent demographic
contractions and the impoverishment of the social and built fabric and their related services. The conditions of the
European city, where growth is, in any case, moderate and often primarily the result of immigration, as in North America
and Australia, are not comparable to those in the large metropolitan centres of South America, Africa and Asia. However,
the primary question continues to focus on urban quality: the city must guarantee the contentment and wellbeing of its
inhabitants. In an era of global mobility, a city must attract citizens capable of creating cultural and material wealth.
Elevated levels of urban quality tend to bind people to a city: there are those who are willing to earn less, as long as they
can live in a pleasing urban environment; in analogous terms when employment forces people to live in a less desirable
location, it is necessary to offer higher wages The quality of life offered by a city remains, by far and large, the
determinant factor of competitiveness. There is no doubt that our control over these phenomena and our ability, in more
general terms, to create new sustainable settlements will, to a great degree, decide the future and the very survival of
the human race.

Rich and poor; migratory flows and borders

In a world in which 90% of all riches are in the hands of 1% of its population, the problem of the expansion of urban
areas is inseparable from the distribution of economic wellbeing. This inequality, as is well known, is at the origin of
phenomena of migration from the poorer parts of the world towards areas of greater wealth. Frontiers function in an
asymmetrical manner: while it is easy to leave poor countries, it is much more difficult to enter rich ones (the so-called
fortress-continents, such as the European Union, spoken about, for example, by Naomi Klein). The very notion of the
frontier is now dislocated with respect to what were once the physical borders of individual countries: controls often take
place far from the latter, in airports, in diplomatic outposts or in the virtual space of the net. As observed by Zygmunt
Bauman, the only industry that prospers in the land of new arrivals (equivocally and often misleadingly referred to as
developing countries) is that of the serial production of refugees. The separation between immigrants and the
inhabitants of refugee camps, on the one hand, and local citizens, those with roots, as they have been called by
Norbert Elias, on the other, is progressively more significant: in the era of global mobility the term foreigner is
paradoxically closer to its etymological and archaic origins: extraneous, estranged, unusual, with a hostile connotation.
Today, it is more and more common that the refugee, as Bertolt Brecht writes in his poem Die Landschaft des Exils, is
ein Bote des Unglcks, a harbinger of misfortune2. Closely related to phenomena of migration are issues of safety
and fear management. The progressive loss of a sense of community accompanies what Robert Castle has referred
to as the return of the dangerous classes: in a paradoxical manner the city, historically created to protect its inhabitants
against the dangers of the outside world, is now more dangerous on the inside. The walls and moats that once
separated the city (safe) from the surrounding territory (dangerous) are now proposed again, in a more less obvious
manner, creating a ghettos in which, voluntarily or involuntarily, its inhabitants are enclosed. These divisions are
obviously never 100% clear: urban realities are rich with grey areas and articulations with respect to the simplifications

1
2

Renzo Piano, La responsabilit dell'architetto,conversazione con Renzo Cassigoli, Passigli, Bagno a Ripoli (FI) 2007, pp. 37-38
Zygmunt Bauman, Modus vivendi, inferno e utopia del mondo liquido, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2007 (or. ed. 2006), p. 36.

202

MIC _ My Ideal City

required by any abstract reasoning. All the same, it is a fact that, with the increase in levels of fear, the search for safety
is more pressing, in some cases assuming irrational proportions. The result is the proliferation of gated communities:
residential enclaves composed of open spaces that, while they may appear to be public are, in reality, entirely private
and where those who do not follow the rules are forced to leave; there are also a number of perceptive aspects that,
while they may appear to be secondary, are in no way to be ignored: from reinforced doors and barred windows to the
use of bullet proof vehicles. Walls and physical barriers of all types are used to isolate homes, residential
neighbourhoods, the spaces of production and work; all of this is accompanied by security guards and electronic
surveillance systems, both visible and invisible, and psychological barriers that are often no less visible than their
physical counterparts. The invisibility of these systems grows with the level of wealth and power of those they defend:
in the most exclusive urban and suburban areas, houses and offices are often enclosed by standard windows and
surrounded by vast lawns with no fences: however, efficient electronic eyes make them impossible to access. The
wealthy and elite, progressively less fixed to any one physical space and increasingly more mobile in the extra-territorial
world of networks, or an international class that exists independently of physical space, seek solutions to issues of
security within the islands that isolate them from the rest of the city. On the other hand, the poor are increasingly
segregated from the wealthy, and often between one another, generally for reasons of ethnic origins. Almost any city in
the first world contains, in a more or less visible manner, its own third world, with problems of infant mortality,
malnutrition, illness, a shortage of housing, etc.; in analogous terms, almost any third world country has its own small
first world that contains financial districts, large hotels, luxurious residential areas, fashion, advanced technology, etc.

Densification
The density of urban settlements and the value of their sustainability whether it is better to proceed towards the
progressive densification, even vertical, of the city or whether it is preferable to horizontally expand out into the territory
is a question that has long occupied experts. The most recent and accredited studies tend to favour the first hypothesis:
the compact, high-density city appears to be the best response to the need to host growing masses of inhabitants. The
contemporary era has labelled densely populated urban areas with the dark and sinister image that was once the
subject, though from different political and cultural points of view, of such authors as Friedrich Engels, Thomas Carlisle,
George Herbert Wells and Ebenezer Howard to Le Corbusier. However, it is precisely this level of elevated density that
has led to the recognition of automobiles as a source of pollution and the move towards sustainable public
transportation, in addition to guaranteeing social security and offering a sense of variety and vitality. If it is true that time
is destined to become a progressively more precious commodity, we must work towards the reduction of daily travel
times between home to work: a condition privileged by highly dense areas and a disadvantage in extensive settlements.
What is also clear is the inverse proportionality that exists between elevated density and demographic growth: it has
been proven that when a population reaches a certain level of education and adaptation to urban life, it produces less
offspring. An emblematic example is to be found in Seoul, which became one of the most densely inhabited cities on
earth in only a few short years that coincided with a complete collapse in the number of new births. Urban life offers
advantageous socio-cultural conditions that permit greater levels of freedom: in our case, for example, this allows
women to have more control over their lives, marrying at a later age and having less children, a desirable result in areas

203

MIC _ My Ideal City

characterised by intense demographic growth. There is also general consensus regarding the necessity of limiting the
foolish use of parkland or, in other words, the progressive growth of built areas that consume agricultural land: almost all
advocates of densification, even while supporting the necessity of introducing low-income housing in central and semicentral areas, consider acceptable only those interventions in so-called brownfield sites the abandoned landscapes of
former industrial and post-industrial activities and not in greenfields parkland and natural areas to be preserved.
Building expansion that consumes the countryside, in regions such as The Netherlands and England three examples
chosen not by chance given that they represent, respectively, the top three countries with the smallest amount of open
space per capita, a problem also found in Italy cannot help but be a cause for concern, further aggravated by the costs
of providing these suburban settlements with services and infrastructures. On the other hand, the centres of the most
famous Western metropolises, above all those in Europe that are most attractive for their history, culture and fashion,
etc., are inhabited almost exclusively by wealthy classes: in some cases, and we can mention the most expensive areas
of a city like London, we are speaking of a class whose lifestyle is defined by an elevated level of sui generis
nomadism. Houses are occupied only on rare occasions and the image of these areas, undoubtedly pleasing to the
eye, belongs to a category we can call boutique lifestyle, more similar to a theme park of luxury hotels, restaurants,
cafs and shops: real life appears to take place only in the peripheries, the suburbs or secondary and minor urban
centres.

Vertical expansion
Towers, or high-rises in general with more than 12 stories, now represent a rapidly expanding typology around the globe.
Almost 50% of these types of buildings have been constructed since the year 2000; almost 10% are currently under
construction (cf. Emporis.com). As mentioned, the culture of congestion is more ecological than that of sprawl, or the socalled diffusion of the city into the landscape; the vertical movement of an elevator is much less polluting than horizontal
movement, for example on a highway. Towers reduce the waste of land and services, and their ecological footprint, while
consistent, is in any case sustainable. The commercial and social success of mixed-use high-rise complexes is
significant. Vertical development has led to the considerable growth of technological research: structures, facades,
materials, building systems and intelligent systems of vertical movement, the industrialisation of the building process,
energy efficiency, maintenance, safety, etc., have all been enormously improved and made available to almost
everyone. Not lastly, the increasingly more spectacular image of these buildings appears to work in favour of new,
progressively larger investments, as well as making it easier to work around urban planning restrictions. Todays towers
are far from the original concept that saw them as strictly related to the business districts in the heart of North American
cities. In Europe they have spread for the most part at the margins of the historical city, for example La Dfense in Paris
or Canary Wharf in London (The City, also in London, represents an important exception: restrictions defined by visual
corridors towards St. Pauls, London Bridge and Big Ben led to a sporadic and irregular form of vertical development).

Sustainability
The necessity of moving towards sustainable settlements can no longer be avoided. The city is the battlefield on which
we are wagering the future of mankind. Urban sustainability is a concretely valid concept with respect to a number of
fundamental parameters, such as the objective of producing more energy than we consume, local recycling and waste

204

MIC _ My Ideal City

management and the reuse of water, etc. Naturally, these objectives must co-exist with the more traditional intent of
creating economic and social wellbeing, favouring the development of culture and technology, etc. We are thus speaking
of a significant challenge: without a revolution in thinking, it will be difficult to modify the current state of things.
Construction and transportation are responsible for 70% of harmful emissions; the networks and infrastructures of the
city, even the richest ones, are for the most part obsolete. The real problem, however, is that we can no longer imagine
importing the standards of Western cities to poorer continents: on the other hand, we must learn from them and seek
new. models of development. Mexico City, Mumbai or Caracas, while enormously vast and polluting, have developed a
culture of survival and the reuse of waste that makes them, in many ways, more in line with contemporary thinking than
their European counterparts. A citizen of Bangladesh requires 0.002 km2 to support what he consumes, while in Europe
this number is 0.06.

Positive examples
Positive examples include: Barcelona, a city that, in recent years, has successfully modified its urban fabric by creating a
large number of neighbourhood public spaces; Curitiba in Brazil, which has advanced a policy for the progressive
diminution of the private automobile in favour of public transportation; Copenhagen, a city that has continued to support
movement on foot or by bicycle over the last 30 years, a policy whose positive results are to be found in the limited
growth of the number of automobiles in circulation; and, finally Manchester, which is managing to transform its historical
condition as an industrial centre into one of the most green cities in the United Kingdom. Another important example is
London: thanks to the much discussed Congestion Tax, and the significant increase in the number of urban buses it
finances, (over 40% in 2000), the number of people travelling by bicycle has doubled, together with a limitation in the
number of private vehicles in the centre; however, the ecological footprint of the English capital is equal to 293 times its
surface: this means that the city requires an area far superior to that of the entire United Kingdom to meet its energy and
resource requirements. Extremely interesting is also what is going on in Hamburg, with the ambitious programs of
HafenCity, not far from the Innerstadt, the historic district, and the IBA Hamburg International Expo, a huge area
including Veddel, Kleiner Grasbrook, Steinwerder and the isle of Wilhemsburg, Similar experimentations are taking
place in Stockholm, with the case study of Hammarby Sjstad, a sustainable, environmentally friendly, mixed use
development, not far from the city centre. An excellent example of the Swedish green welfare state, certainly capable
of promoting sustainable development, new jobs, growth, welfare, a successful cooperation between public and private
sectors and, last but not least, a qualified architectural image of the public realm and the built environment. Maybe a
sign of a more mature approach for the future of the European city.

205

MIC _ My Ideal City

Fig 1,2,3,4,5,6. Stockolm. Hammarby Sjstad and the Apate Bridge

DSSARR - Digital Design Laboratory of the Pescara School of Architecture.
Authors: N. Cassino, S. Cilli, G. Di Bartolomeo - Tutors: C. Casulli, L.V. Losciale

Figure 1

206

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 2

Figure 3

207

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 4

Figure 5

208

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 6

209

MIC _ My Ideal City

Blots and Patchworks: Images of a Spread City

Rossella Salerno, Department of Architecture and Planning, Politecnico di Milano

Blots, stains, reduce the landscape to a representation. Nowadays, which is the value, which is the sense that we can
we ascribe to the pictorial method invented by Alexander Cozens in 1785? Can we read a blot as an explanatory
metaphor for the landscape? A landscape expressed by blots, a nature delimited by forms with uncertain outlines,
fragments, just when the Industrial Revolution were growing, involving territories in huge changes?

A. Cozens, Blot, from A New Method

In the early Seventies of the past century, Manfredo Tafuri interpreted the Cozenss picturesque theory expressed in A
New Method, (Tafuri, 1973). According to Tafuri, the theory would represent the planning aim of controlling the complex
expansion of the city; the last effort of keeping un grand ordre dans les dtails, just when de la confusion, du fracas, du
tumulte, were expanding dans lensemble of the city and the territory, as Abb Laugier wrote, in those years (Laugier,
1765).1
The birds eye view of C.-N. Ledoux on Maupertuis village , just like a premonitory icon of future urban settings, shows
a project on a knife-edge between the autonomy of the shape and the foreshadowing of future green suburbs, a
picturesque forecast about the expansion of the compact city towards countries. Anyway, in the short span of the

I tackled this topic in Paesaggi Forme Immagini, Libreria Clup, Milano 2006, in the chapter titled Modificazioni pittoresche, pp. 89-108.

210

MIC _ My Ideal City

following years, the picturesque consolatory illusion would clash with the industrial economy growth. The images
mentioned above can also be considered from another point of view, an imaginary constitution of the cities which often
plays a crucial role in people and ruling classes expectations, acting sometimes as an anticipating function on the future
settings. Sometimes, author and designers imaginary comes before and interprets the collective imaginary.
We can agree with Andr Corboz and Bernardo Secchi about the hypothesis that the largest part of the earth surface is
a huge depository of signs consciously left by whom came before us; the word sign has a double interpretation: cities,
villages, houses and isolated huts, roads and paths, canals, galleries, dikes, terracing, deforestations, fields divisions
and their destination to specific cultivations, rows of trees and plantations, compose just the palimpsest on which
different generations wrote, corrected, erased and added.2

C.-N. Ledoux, Maupertuis village, 1800

The meaning depository of signs besides indicating a material aspect, a physical consistence of great and little events
which restlessly engraved and rewrote the territory, can give us a chance, maybe not less important, to consider those
figures which geographers, cartographers and urbanists elaborated on their descriptive and interpretative production, as
well as planning activity.
As in the past, those figures can still be of help today, in understanding how that huge depository of signs is
articulated, a legacy from whom came before us. What the just mentioned Ledouxs image seems to suggest us, is a
utopian synthesis between concentration and decentralization, the two crucial figures in which the history of modern
cities realized. Bernardo Secchi draws again our attention to those huge blocks of prefabricated materials3 that are
peculiar of cities from the Renaissance to XIX century. For a long time, the parts of the cities, the monuments and the
parks linked through masterly perspective enfilade, have represented the structure of a urban body which will

Compare B. SECCHI, Prima lezione di urbanistica, Laterza, Bari 2010, p.3; A. CORBOZ, Il territorio come palinsesto, in Casabella 516, 1985.
Stimulating and rich analogy between musical compositional and architectonical urban processes suggested by Secchi: In 1976, Charles Rosen,
pianist and music historiographer, wrote a brief biography of Arnold Schnberg. Using an architectonical metaphor, he claims music, from the
Renaissence to XIX century, along the modernity, has been built up thanks to the disposition and the composition of huge blocks of prefabricated
materials. What failed in music between Mozart and Schnberg, is just the possibility to use those huge blocks of prefabricated materials. Since
the end of XIX century [] their use leads just to the pastiche. From Schnberg, Webern and Berg on, the music starts to be written note by note.
(C. Rosen, Schnberg, Marion Boyars, London, 1976), compare B. SECCHI, quotation, pp. 58-59.

2
3

211

MIC _ My Ideal City

inevitably change towards the scattering settlements, in surrounding territories, and the dispersing of a univocal
relationship between the relevant elements and the urban shape.
The experience of the urban concentration strongly characterized the west world even in negative aspects related to
crowding, congestion, lack of health conditions. The figure of decentralization showed itself several times both with an
equal and unequal strength and has been proposed in different forms from urbanistic culture; the first time from utopists
during the XIX century, later through the Garden Cities plans and more recently in theories about city-region and
policies for balancing the metropolitan recentralization and the territorial readjustment.
Anyway, urban and territorial events cannot be considered separately because they are the two sides of a matter.
Currently, in fact, the contraposition between city and countryside seems completely meaningless, even if the traditional
way of understanding a city, which corresponds to the figure of the concentration, appears so deeply rooted to indicate
other possible scenarios with difficulty.
This is, in a way, the question that Vittorio Gregotti seems to put himself facing the consciousness of the genetic
change of the postmetropolis. As a consequence of the spread of the city, a nearly global event, Gregotti wonders if
communities will not feel the need of finding (or going back to?) a new compatibility between stability and renewal. What
does the idea of stability represent if not a return to a compact and concentrate urban structure? Gregotti's point of view
is plainly declared at the beginning of his book: Since thousands of years, architecture looks at cities, in the boundless
variety of their typologies, as a whole and as a drawing of its parts. Sometimes, it widens its look to the ambition of
defining a global project as an architectonic work, a utopic project or a set of rules of its development and way to plan
concerning the geographical settlement conditions besides social conditions.4
Does the city have any future apart from the concentration figure which characterized that human product that, quoting
Lvi-Strauss, is la chose humaine par exellence?
Salvatore Settis, another authoritative voice, lately wrote about the relationship between urban morphologies and
landscapes: The history of space has, like any other history, three dimensions equally indispensable: memory of
historical sedimentation on which time left traces; hic et nunc, the result of processes under the way, included between
the inertial preservation (maybe just for the scarcity of resources) and the planned destruction (in wealthy time);
eventually it involves a future project (the lack of any project is a project itself, as it implies a disdain of future
generations).5
It means that landscapes configure themselves like a mosaic of synchronic concurrences and a stratified diachronic
palimpsest, at the same time. In this case, it could be true that the concentration figures and the human decentralization
settlements seem to coexist and some useful ways must be undertaken in future.
Referring to the Italian context, the phenomenon of spreading dwellings out of the urban settlements is a raising
question. The irregular growth of low-density living neighbourhoods wears the landscape out. This is what English
studies call urban sprawl or spread city: unplanned, incremental urban development, typified by a low-density use of
lands on the city threshold. It tends to saturate every available space for very vast areas. This result is mainly due to the
lack of an effective territorial policy. (Gibelli e Salzano, 2006).

4
5

V. GREGOTTI, Architettura e postmetropoli, Einaudi, Torino 2011, p. 3.

S. SETTIS, Paesaggio Costituzione Cemento, Einaudi, Torino 2010, p. 55.

212

MIC _ My Ideal City

This new kind of horizontal city is diffused, widespread and growing on itself. It modifies the countryside leaving
interstitial segments, remains and fragments among buildings. These fragments are useless for agriculture and for
living, they really constitute a grey zone, a space of incertitude (Clment, 2005).
The French debate on this topic is very rich and articulated. Besides Clment, quoted above, part of the best known and
more discussed positions are Marc Augs theory about non-lieux and Pierre Donadieus book Campagnes urbaines,
which focuses on a similar and parallel issue.
Nevertheless, it is just from the Italian context that raises a reflection and an interesting proposal to face the post-sprawl.
Some years ago Francesco Careri, in a book partly ironic, reread the urban interstices, the remaining spaces, as several
empty gaps on different scales and of different nature; they represent a branching system able to re-establish the urban
emptiness.6
Even if the figure is formless Careri writes the city drawing that we get from separating full and empty spaces can be
reread as a complex, geometrical form, just used to describe those urban systems that call their own structure and look
like formless heap of material (Careri, p. 132). Independently from architects and urbanists theories, this kind of urban
structure, similar to a fractal archipelago, appears as an image self-produced by our own culture. In its outlines, it is
possible to discover the dynamism of a living organism which transforms and leaves behind and inside itself some
abandoned parts of territories hard to control. The gaps, the urban amnesias, are not just places expecting to be filled of
things, but spaces waiting for new meanings. For Careri it isnt a matter of transforming a no-city in a city, but of trying to
understand and get any solution for a parallel city fitted of proper dynamics and structures, still waiting for an
interpretation (Careri, p. 133).
Less poetic but more effective, from an analytical and operative point of view, those urbanists who recognize themselves
in the Landscape urbanism, place an open program at the center of their proposal, to face up the territories of the
contemporary city. This program is expressed through a series of both logic and geo-referred layers, able to consider
porous structures made of city and countryside. There, the traditional components appear difficult to distinguish on
every scale we try to do it. Lately, this urbanistic approach theorizes that what is among the buildings (in-between), the
landscape and not the architecture, organizes the contemporary city, improving urban experiences (Gabellini, p. 57).
In this way, after sprawl, a patchwork possibility is taking place, sewing up parts and fragments of not homogeneous
fabrics, while awaiting a new urbanity re-build, a new landscape.

the spread city. A low-density suburban system of settlement spread creating not homogeneous and extended fabrics, in large territorial areas.
The inhabitants of this city, the widespreads, were people who lived out of the basic civil and urban rules, just in the private space of their houses
and cars. They conceived as public spaces just the shopping centre, the motorway restaurants, the petrol stations and the railway stations,
distroying every single space designed for their social life. The new barbarian who had invaded the city, wanted to change it into a Global
Duckburg, living in detached houses extending their habitat to real motorways and virtual nets. F. CARERI, Walkscapes .Camminare come pratica
estetica, Einaudi, Torino 2006, p.130.

213

MIC _ My Ideal City

A patchwork settlement: Tree Hugger-farmadelphia aerial view

References
AUG M., Non luoghi, Eluthera, Milano 1993.
CARERI F., Walkscapes.Camminare come pratica estetica, Einaudi, Torino 2006.
CLMENT G., Manifesto del terzo paesaggio, Quodlibet, Macerata 2005.
CORBOZ, Il territorio come palinsesto, in Casabella 516, 1985.
COZENS A., A New Method of assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape, 1785.
DONADIEU P., Campagne urbane (1998), Donzelli, Roma 2006.
GABELLINI P., Fare Urbanistica. Esperienze, comunicazione, memoria, Carocci, Roma 2010.
GIBELLI M.C, SALZANO E. (a cura di), No Sprawl, Alinea, Firenze 2006.
GREGOTTI G. , Architettura e postmetropoli, Einaudi, Torino 2011.
LAUGIER M.-A., Observations sur larchitecture, La Haye 1765.
SALERNO R., VILLA D. (a cura di), Rappresentazioni di citt. Immaginari emergenti e linguaggi residuali?, Franco
Angeli, Milano 2006.
SCHLGEL K., Leggere il tempo nello spazio. Saggi di storia e geopolitica, Bruno Mondadori, Milano 2009.
SECCHI B., Prima lezione di urbanistica, Laterza, Bari 2010.
SETTIS S., Paesaggio Costituzione Cemento, Einaudi, Torino 2010.
TAFURI M., Progetto e utopia, Laterza, Bari 1973.

214

MIC _ My Ideal City

From Theatrical Action to the Town as a Stage Set: Urban Images from the
End of the 1960s to Todaya
Ilaria Bignotti, IUAV-Venezia (Dottorato in Teorie e Storia delle Arti, XXV Ciclo)
Elisabetta Modena, Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali e dello Spettacolo, Universit di Parma
Marco Scotti, Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali e dello Spettacolo, Universit di Parma
Francesca Zanella, Dipartimento dei Beni Culturali e dello Spettacolo, Universit di Parma

1. Some clarifications of the method

The following paper is the result of a continuing series of theoretical researches, meetings, debates, and
exhibitions that we have been undertaking since 2005 as a work group for the department for the cultural
heritage and performing arts of Parma university1: beginning with an analysis of the mechanisms through
which the contemporary urban image is constructed, we have moved transversally in order to examine, thanks
to the particular expertise each of us has developed over time, the languages of art and architecture, the new
media, communications, technologies and technological innovations, the analytical tools, and various design
practices with respect to ideologies and theoretical platforms.
In this sense, the opening of this contribution of ours with the description, in a purposely chronicle-like form, of
two theatrical activities undertaken in urban spaces at the end of the 1960s, is intended to relate to the present
situation a debate that today is becoming historicized; this debate concerns art and performance practices,
from the end of the 'sixties and throughout the following decade, that considered urban space as somewhere
to "make things happen".

ZANELLA F, La torre Agbar a Barcellona: progetto, comunicazione, consenso, Parma, Festival architettura edizioni 2006;
ZANELLA F, Citt e luce: fenomenologia del paesaggio illuminato, Parma, Festival Architettura Edizioni 2008;
Architettura & Pubblicit / Pubblicit & architettura, meeting, Parma, November 2010, the minutes are currently being printed.

215

MIC _ My Ideal City

2. Self-performance and Funeral Marches: urban actions and processions, July-September

1969
Two art events in a town space2. The case of Paolo Scheggi

2.1. Caorle, Teatro Totale, 20 July-24 August 1969.

In the context of the art event Nuovi Materiali Nuove Techniche3 (MALLE et. al. 1969) L'Autospettacolo,
microfoni amplificatori + registratori + manifesti.(Self-performance, microphones, amplifiers + tape recorders +
posters) was performed.
A singular undertaking for the time.
The production was by Raffaele Maiello, the scenes by Paolo Scheggi, and the music by Franca Sacchi. The
main interpreters were the artists of the event, the inhabitants of Caorle, and the visitors to the show.
A series of microphones and loudspeakers were placed around the town, in the spaces set aside for exhibiting
the works, as well as inside the installations made by the invited artist-actors; dialogues, voices, the sounds of
the public, the townspeople, the artists, actors and casual or knowing spectators were amplified and
transmitted throughout the town. This was daily life as it occurred - and immediately reproduced. It has been
confirmed by reliable sources that some of the artists had even accepted having microphones attached to their
body.
Art had abandoned the medium of representation and chosen the method of a survey: "A survey, the voices of
the various listening points are transferred to a circuit that represents the only act or aim of the artist's
production".
Posters were affixed to the walls along the streets in order to remind everybody, with a certain dose of
alarmism, that they were involved.
The originator and designer of the Autospettacolo was the young artist Paolo Scheggi who had for some time
stated that he wanted to "fill 'time' as the 'time for theatricality'" and to transform "virtual space into real space"
by shifting "real space towards a time that is liveable and visible" and by rejecting "contemplation in the place
of action, and stillness in the place of dynamics"4. (SCHEGGI 1969, p.17)

The bibliography is particularly extensive: in this note I can only mention the recent publication, edited by Cristina Casero and Elena Di Raddo,
Anni '70: l'arte dell'impegno, which contains a series of articles specifically devoted to interventions and actions in urban spaces and analyzes the
cases of Ugo La Pietra, Enzo Mari, and Archizoom (ZANELLA 2009, pp.69-88); furthermore, a show recently opened, FUORI! ARTE E SPAZIO
URBANO 1968-1976, curated by Silvia Bignami and Alessandra Pioselli in the temporary spaces of the Museo del Novecento, Milan, on the first
floor of the Arengario (BIGNAMI and PIOSELLI, 2011).
3 The event's main aim, as was underlined by the catalogue essays by Mall, Marussi, Passoni, and Trucchi, was to exhibit the positive and
innovative relationships that can be set in motion between art research and technological research in contemporary art: this is reflected in the
event's title which, as was explained by Mall in the catalogue, is reversible and indicates both the possibility of having for the period "new
techniques for new forms of expression" and also "new forms of expression for new techniques", as Mall specified while also wishing the show
itself could "exhibit a naturalness in the integration of forms and techniques in a climate of complete freedom". (MALL L., untitled essay in MALL
et. al. 1969, unnumbered pages).
4 Paolo Scheggi began to become interested in theatre in 1968, a sphere of activity which at first he considered as a field for testing and applying
his researches into plastic architectonic language, then as a means for social and behavioural action, not without ideological and political
implications and analyzed in a mythical-symbolic manner. In order to investigate the artist's researches better, I would refer you to the critical
biography and the recent catalogue of the show devoted to him in Parma curated by Giuseppe Niccoli and Franca Scheggi (BIGNOTTI I, Paolo
Scheggi, tracce per una biografia critica, in NICCOLI e SCHEGGI 2010).
2

216

MIC _ My Ideal City

The town became both a tool and an object for analysis. "With the Autospettacolo we are both the actors and
the public - which is already important in itself - but we are so in an anonymous form (rather like spies) - which
is even more important. Total theatre for a system of total power". (TRINI 1969, no page number). An urban
big brother, as we would say today. But not all the inhabitants of Caorle understood that. "The Autspettacolo
never began and never ended because it was 'a total event', or perhaps the public refused to understand it
'because the artists' interventions modified their natural or artificial environment just for a few days, upsetting
their lazy habits but without sufficiently stimulating their tired anxiety about new ecology" as one journalist
pointed out (RUSCONI 1969, p.3).

2.2. Como, Piazza del Duomo, 21 September 1969 at 9.15 p.m. circa.
The start of Marcia funebre o della geometria. Processione secondo Franca Sacchi e Paolo Scheggi (The
funeral march or the march of geometry. A procession with Franca Sacchi and Paolo Scheggi).
An urban theatre-action in 4 moments and 6 movements.
Floodlights are alternately turned on from four corners of the completely dark square; the volume of the funeral
march increases and decreases leaving for the six masked actors the necessary space for carrying in
procession large geometric solids: a red cube; a white sphere; a blue pyramid; a black cone; a yellow cylinder;
a violet parallelepiped.
From four loudspeakers voices peremptorily declaim, through quotations from the bible or poetry, the forms of
urban time: as a condition, as catharsis, as an absence of condition.
The onlookers, those taking part in the procession, those listening or simply tagging along, react differently:
most do not understand, but they are involved all the same.
On the other hand, during the day the inhabitants of Como had also watched Bruno Munari's visualization of
air, obtained by flying myriads of strips of paper; in front of the cathedral Gianni Pettena had hung out laundry;
a little further on Valentina Berardinone had created an anti-monument to victory, racked by commiseration;
Enrico Baj proclaimed there had been a coup d'tat and then he began to paint nationalistic horizontal signs;
Luciano Fabro solemnly asked for the concession of communal land; Grazia Varisco outlined an itinerary with
recuperated cardboard boxes; Ugo La Pietra covered a road in order to make another one; there had been
created/experienced an artificial storm in a cloudless sky; and that evening the funeral march solemnly
rounded off a day in which the town of Como had been transformed into a Campo Urbano (an Urban Field)5:

Campo Urbano was an attempt to reflect on the meaning of artistic research and its possibilities for intervention on urban areas rather than the
usual places for its divulgation and circulation such as museums and galleries. Because it was concerned with temporary events that took place on
just one day, the role of Ugo Mulas was fundamental: he had made a photographic record of the various events. On the occasion of the previously
mentioned FUORI! ARTE E SPAZIO URBANO 1968-1976, (BIGNAMI and PIOSELLI 2011), and thanks to the complex and rigorous activity of the
Mulas archive, Mulas's photos were mounted sequentially in a video - enriched with a reconstruction and reproduction of the speakers and music,
the sounds and noises which characterized that particular day - which was screened on three walls of a specifically constructed and separate room.
Ugo Mulas's sequence of photos recording Paolo Scheggi's Marcia funebre was exhibited, on the insistence of Scheggi himself, as a work in itself

217

MIC _ My Ideal City

"a test for a 'live' check-up of ideas and proposals for the possibilities and ways today for a concrete
relationship between artists and urban communities and the spaces and structures in which they live out their
daily life". (CARAMEL 1970, no page number).
The two actions with a theatrical and production character, the Autospettacolo and Marcia funebre o della
geometria for the Campo Urbano, took place in small urban centres where the town's public was particularly
deprived of, and distant from, experimental languages which were easily understood and were more frequently
seen in large urban centres and in exhibition spaces: so the contrast became more tense and thus more likely
to stimulate further thoughts and debate about the relationship between citizens and the urban space, between
the individual and habitable and liveable spaces. In those very months between July and September 1969
there took place (or was enacted?) the first moon landing, the human conquest of another space, of a new
ideal place for the creation of various urban images. What has remained of these experiences of theoretical
debate and of planning and creative practices in the following thirty years, from the 1980s until today?

and not simply as a photographic record in the show Amore mio held the following year in 1970 in Palazzo Ricci, Montepulciano; this was a
fascinating and revolutionary group show originated by the artists themselves and coordinated by Achille Bonito Oliva (AMORE MIO, 1970).
Together with the series of photos by Ugo Mulas, Scheggi also exhibited his Tomba di Geometria which consisted of a black wall and mirrors with
lapidary writing; the Tomba di Geometria was, by representing them only nominally, an environment destined to show the solid elements of the
basis of Euclidean geometry, some of which had been carried in procession during the funeral march: PYRAMIDS, SQUARES, CYLINDERS,
CONES, PARALLELEPIPEDS, and RECTANGLES.

218

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 1. Manifesto dellAutospettacolo, 1969. Copie del manifesto erano sparse per la citt di Caorle durante la manifestazione Nuovi Materiali
Nuove Tecniche, 20 luglio-24 agosto 1969. Courtesy Collezione Franca e Cosima Scheggi, Milano

Figure 2. Paolo Scheggi, note registiche per la Marcia Funebre o della geometria. Processione secondo Franca Sacchi e Paolo Scheggi, Como,
Campo Urbano, 21 settembre 1969. Courtesy Collezione Franca e Cosima Scheggi, Milano

219

MIC _ My Ideal City

3. Ideas and Images of Post- and Hyper-modern Cities

From street theatre, the venue for performances and for re-appropriating town spaces, to the street theatre-set
inside the Corderie in the Venice arsenal; this was what had been originated by Paolo Portoghesi in 1980 in
order to re-launch history through an "artificial" city representing the hypermodern and hyper-signifying
metropolises of the image system of the past decades. Schematically, this is the itinerary we are tracing out
with our researches into urban imaginary within which "brand stories" have also been analyzed in the search
for possible relationships between ideas of a city as discussed by planners, and metropolitans images and
stories constructed in order to promote products.
Around the corpus of adverts we have so far grouped together and analyzed, it is possible to pinpoint
meaningful correspondences with certain key words of the past decades listed by Winy Maas when he was
asked by Aaron Betsky to take part in one of the architecture Saturdays in the autumn of 2010.
With respect to thoughts about utopias, deconstruction, what is virtual, icons, sustainability, and conservation,
which undoubtedly have an equivalent in the value-system proposed by advertising communications, here we
can pay attention to the construction of two "spaces" in which there are strong relationships between the
system of representation and that of inventing.
The former is one where towns are challenging places in which the narration moves through the interstices of
outskirts disseminated with barriers; these become an antagonist against which the protagonist are opposed
in a Parkour action which can be understood as an act of "re-appropriation" through the attribution of new
meanings. We can flank this aspect, which has a correspondence in the researches of the Dane Kaspar
Astrup Schrreder with his My Playground programme, with the reinterpretation of the metropolis which is a
certain sense is represented by the Nike advert Write the Future6. In the video the story is told through
contemporary "locations": piazzas, stadiums, the web, with a continual passage from one representational
code to another, from one visual genre to another. Virtual space is superimposed and confused by challenging
physical territories and fictional and cartoon imagery.
So urban imagery is built up by starting from a self-reflective act about forms of representation, as is evident in
the Pesce Rosso agency's advert for Nike, Corri senza freni, which shows a sequential obstacle course
through a dark and deserted city, narrated through fragments of marks and contexts where an athlete, thanks
to the magical object, creates a series of images that belong to metropolitan culture. This is a subtle game of
rewriting in which the creation of the moving body's "double" creates a further level of signs according to
metropolitan culture. There is created in this way a sequence which is an obvious quotation of Muybridge's
series in which the figure is recomposed as a result of the acceleration of the individual images seen one after
the other. The image of a contemporary nocturnal town is thus brought back to its origins by being transformed
into theatre as a result of a Victorian device. This advert confirms what Cadeluppi has indicated with reference

Wieden + Kennedy, 2010.

220

MIC _ My Ideal City

to the 1990s, i.e. the affirmation of a self-referential discourse7. There is a short-circuit between the message
and the analysis of perceptive mechanisms that is the same one that has led certain architectural researches,
such as those of Toio Ito with his Wind Tower, to consider architecture as a message-broadcaster.
But with Corri senza freni we find an unusual component: the magical object is a visual device which unifies,
not only the photo-frames, but also the metropolitan labyrinth and, in a certain sense, reconciles our thoughts
about representation with those of the possibilities of a project.
So this is a contribution to an organized debate characterized by a sharp confrontation between art practices,
as has been seen in the past two editions of the biennale of architecture8, and certain exhibitions such as
Beyond Architecture. Imaginative Buildings and Fictional Cities9, and Dreamlands, 2010. These and other
events reveal to us another way of looking at architecture and towns based on thoughts about ways of
representation. In the context of art research there is criticism of the manifestos of the modern movement, of
architecture expressing the global economy, undertaken by altering the tools traditionally tied to projects such
as models or diagrams. A significant case is that of Anarkitekton, Colomer's project in which the circuit
generated by sculpture, happenings, and installation goes beyond the conceptual nature of certain examples
of Land art.
The contaminations between the traditional genres for constructing an image seem tourst into the narratives of
the places of modernity and post-modernity par excellence. One of the components that characterize
contemporary research is the representation of an "artificial" reality dislocated in time and space (from
Disneyland to Las Vegas and Dubai), or recreated in ways that purposely underline the reproduction
technique, the opposition between reality and what is represented.
With regard to architecture the best-known example is Celebration designed for Disney in Florida in 1996,
while in the sphere of visual research we might well mention certain works that document the use of the studio
as a set10 or as scenery, or other such dislocations as Las Vegas.
These are iconographic and visual models shared by advertising. Just think of the Ford Kuga11 advert in which
breaking through the scenery, as a symbol of the passage from one situation to another, recalls the escape
from Celebration on the Truman Show; in the advert the white canvas proposes a theatrical scenery as
something to be recreated and that can remind us of such artistic actions as Christo's packaging but which,
however, negates the architectural sign, even if it underlines its presence. But they also remind us of the works
by Rachel Whiteread, which make use of the tools for representing urban and architectural design by playing
with shifts in scale and the absolute contamination of art genres in order to call our attention to the symbolic
meaning of architecture and of towns.

From the Nike The Wall advert, 1994, in which the wall-poster frees itself from the two-dimensionality of the wall, to that produced by Michel
Gondry for Lancia Y10,1995, which can be seen as a discourse about the forms of urban advertising.
8 In particular the one curated by Aaron Betsky and that by Kazujo Sejima.
9 Temporre Kunstahalle, Berlin 2009.
10 Street & Studio. An urban History of Photography, published by U. Eskildsen with F. Ebner and B. Kaufmann, London, Tate 2008.
11 Ogilvy, London, 2008.
7

221

MIC _ My Ideal City

4. Contemporary city as a set for urban scenarios

One of the most significant aspect in the study of the contemporary city, of its representations and its
complexity is linked to the eventual consequences that the so called urban scenarios either recreational,
commercial or cinematographic could have on the real city.
Four years ago on the occasion of Festival dellArchitettura 2007-2008 titled Public landscape, we suggested
a thigh link between a urban scenario based on digital aesthetics and the planning of the real landscape:
quoting Benjamin (BENJAMIN 1936) we could suggest the existence of a landscape in the age of its
mechanical reproducibility (MODENA 2008). The focus of our interdisciplinary approach12 were urban context
places in which the imagines of the urban landscape have origin and then are virtually reproduced in several
contests such as videogames, virtual community, architectural rendering and contemporary digital mapping.
Then we found out the consequences on the planning of real city in terms of the creation of a common
aesthetic and so the transfer of these aesthetics in the real city, and in terms of perception; we recognized the
crisis of the liaison between identity and place as one of the most relevant aspect; in the end we stated the
tendency toward a cut and paste type of planning beside the contest as on of the result of this premises.
The city in the digital world becomes a set more or less similar to the original (SCOTTI 2008) in which a story
takes place or things happen: our research was based on a assumption of the gnoseological value of the
visual experience as stated by Tomas Maldonado13 (MALDONADO 1992).
We recognized in the so called virtual aesthetics some elements: the high definition, the kitsch, the
hyperrealism, proper of the videogame and cartoon graphic, together with a certain surrealism as well as a
widespread citing of postmodern matrices. Is it possible therefore that the permeability of this pop language
could influence the real urban planning? It could be as we can see in cut and paste architecture, the
architecture of the super-surreality14 (such as in Dubai or Macao15). It is largely accepted that the
massmediatic culture16, even the one that Gillo Dorfles defines the para-artistic aesthetic, plays today a
fundamental role, but it is also evident that it implies a symbiotic exchange: the city phagocytize the scenarios
that are produced or influenced by the city itself.
One more evidence of this permeability can be found in the advertising context that is the transposition in the
city of imagines and stories proper of the advertising scene of the last decades. Things that were prefigured in
advertising becomes real today trough the commercial ser up of the real city. The graphic solutions and the
linguistic escamotage (the use of rhetorical figures) typical of the advertising dimension takes place today in
the ephemeral planning.

The research theme was interdisciplinary and composed by J. Gervasi, A. Mascio, A. Meneghelli, E. Modena, A. Salarelli, M. Scotti.
For a deep analysis see also DELEUZE 1968 e LEVY 1995.
14 DORFLES 2007.
15 The case study is different from the one of Las Vegas, but the model is once again the Luna park and to a certain point the American Mall. See
the critical debate from Robert Venturi to Rem Koolhaas.
16 More recently in a study concerning Architecture-Project-Media, we focused on the connection between architecture and advertising .
12
13

222

MIC _ My Ideal City

The necessity of catching the attention and shocking the audience pushes advertisers to find typologies of
urban intervention similar to artistic practices not only urban but also models of interaction and of urban
furniture, of conventions and imagines taking inspiration from the languages of the visual art.
The ambient advertising17 enters the city as a type of urban set up: the exhibit design in fact - considered here
as a project tout court even if ephemeral and taken as a good practice of exhibition and organisation of
commercial and artistic collections - developed a significant adaptation taking advance of its ephemeral
nature, key element of modernity. The critical debate on exhibit design in the last two decades focused on this
aspects recognising a thigh relationship between the communication of the message and the promotional
aspect. From communication to advertising therefore, and advertising enters the city as a type of
entertainment and urban set up at the same time and it changes the city in terms on ephemeral as well as rich
of consequences from the point of view of perception of the city itself, in terms of aesthetics and of planning at
last.
The city and urban space therefore as a big set, a white cube, stage of communities in which parts of the city
and ways to live it are discussed and, most of all, invented thanks to the permeability of creative contexts
apparently indifferent, thanks to a fluid membrane between real and imagined reality, not always deeply
studied and analysed.

5. The videogame cities between utopia and models

The videogame city is a set. Just like the cities built for a film inside a studio, a game environment must
translate narrative needs, references, quotations, to set up a functional space after the programmers and
screenwriters requirements and goals.
But the videogame experience has in its own nature the continuous interaction with the graphic environment
you play into, and most of the times also the possibility to modify and also realise it following the precise rules
of the simulation, rules that have become more and more complex till today: we can just mention the Sim City
series, one of the examples more linked with the architectural and urban project.
Obviously looking through videogame history we can found plenty of ambients which played a role similar to
that of theatrical wings, often because of the limited power and capacity offered by the engines: those could be
a schematic and symbolic representation of an American city created from an imaginary made of skyscrapers
and smoking manholes, designed to support the player action with just a few active and spatial elements.
Many genres have however always researched for a particular relationship with the playable space: an
adventure like The Secret of Monkey Island is an example, presenting a model based on fixed-scene locations

17 E. Modena, Architettura e pubblicit. Progetti di allestimento urbano, Architettura e Pubblicit/Pubblicit e Architettura, conference, Universit di
Parma, 23-24 November 2010.

223

MIC _ My Ideal City

(following codes and conventions established inside this particular kind of adventures and inside this precise
software house) but building up a complex interactivity between a rigid interface and a cinematic narrativity.
Focusing on many precise videogame genres which in recent years researched on urban environments, such
as racing games, first person shooter or adventure games, we can understand how the three-dimensional
modelling brought us to complex city models, perfectly reproducing existing spaces; with general graphic
trends in the translation and reproduction of real world ambients pointing towards a more and more marked
chase to a photorealistic style as an aesthetic reference, side by side with bigger and bigger investments from
the studios and a continuous update of the technological supports.
Today, as we look to the cities represented in videogames, its clear that they arent just a scenography
anymore, their spatial qualities are exhibited and displayed, their urban characters are often used to involve
the player into the environment, and to invite him to explore this closed world, even independently from the
game main goals.
Behind the surfaces, reconstructed from long and accurate photographic campaigns and researches, the
polygons that creates the structures remain invisibles, but the space is open and walkable (until you do not
reach the last border) and the city is a complex place, a simulation precise even in the graphic details and
well-regulated by physics laws and a set of rules that applies also to the architecture. And the graphic
representation could choose to set up historical reconstructions such as utopias or dystopias inspired by
literature or cinematographic models, side by side with impressive, highly detailed reproductions of actual
cities.
The city of New York in Crysis 2 represents a state of the art example, designed with an engine also used by
many professional companies outside the videogame world, and an interesting overlapping of a dystopic sci-fi
imaginary upon the perfectly recognizable model of the city. Also the sandbox reconstruction of many
postmodern American cities in the Grand Theft Auto Series, from the eighties Miami full of quotations from
Scarface or Carlitos Way to the contemporary New York, contributed to build up the game upon a controlled
image.
The videogame influences are however so wide and diffused that they are creeping outside the ludic context
and the technologies here applied find their way into many different areas and languages, creating links and
one-to-one references, putting these cities into the different paths of the contemporary collective imagination.

224

MIC _ My Ideal City

References
AARSETH E., Cybertext: perspectives on ergodic literature, Baltimore-London, Johns Hopkins University Press 1997.
AARSETH E., Allegories of Space: The Question of Spatiality in Computer Games in CyberText Yearbook 2000 by
Markku Eskelinen e Raine Koskimaa, Jyvaskyla, Research Centre for Contemporary Culture 2000.
ALTARELLI L., Light city : la citt in allestimento, Roma, Meltemi 2006.
AMENDOLA G., La citt postmoderna. Magie e paure della metropoli contemporanea, Bari ; Roma, Laterza 1997.
BENJAMIN W., Das Kunstwerk um Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, Paris, 1936; italian consulted
edition. BENJAMIN W., Lopera darte nellepoca della sua riproducibilit tecnica, Torino, Einaudi 1966.
BIGNAMI S., PIOSELLI A., FUORI! Arte e spazio urbano 1968-1976, Milano, Electa 2011.
BIGNOTTI I., Paolo Scheggi, tracce per una biografia critica, in NICCOLI G., SCHEGGI F., Paolo Scheggi, Bologna,
Damiani 2010.
CARAMEL L., untitled text, in CARAMEL L., MULAS U., MUNARI B., Campo Urbano. Interventi estetici nella dimensione
collettiva urbana, Como, Cesare Nani 1970, n. p.
CODELUPPI V., Che cos' la pubblicit, Roma, Carocci 2001.
DELEUZE G., Diffrence e rptition, Paris, Press Universitaires de France, 1968.
DORFLES G., Lestetica virtuale surrealista?, Corriere della sera, 08-30- 2007.
DE MARTIIS P., CALVESI M., Teatro delle mostre, Roma, Lerici Editore 1968.
DREAMLANDS, Des parcs d'attractions aux cits du futur, Paris, Centre Pompidou 2010.
ESKILDEN U., EBNER F., KAUFFMANN B. (ed. by), Street & Studio. An urban History of Photography, London, Tate
2008.
Pubblico Paesaggio. Documenti del Festival dell'Architettura 4 2007-2008. Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Parma,
FestivalArchitetturaEdizioni 2008.
HUDSON-SMITH A., Digital Geography. Geographic Visualization for Urban Environments, London, CASA, University
College London 2008.
LEVY P., Quest-ce que le virtuel?, Paris, Edition La Dcouvert, 1995.
MALDONADO T., Reale e virtuale, Milano, Feltrinelli 1992.
MALL L., MARUSSI G., PASSONI F., TRUCCHI L., Nuovi Materiali Nuove Tecniche, Cremona, Cremona Nuova 1969.
MODENA E., Iconografie ed estetiche dellimmagine digitale in Pubblico Paesaggio. Documenti del Festival dellArchitettura 4 2007-2008. Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Parma, FestivalArchitetturaEdizioni 2008, pp. 300-303.
MORE G., Lines of sight: Architecture and the model of the videogame, in Models, Volume 11, New York, 306090 inc.
2007.
KENT S. L., The Ultimate History of Video Games: From pong to Pokemon and beyond the story behind the craze that
touched our lives and changed the world, New York, Three rivers press 2001.
KING G., KRZYWINSKA T. (ed. by), Screenplay: cinema/videogames/interfaces, London, Wallflower press, 2002.
PERRON B., THERRIEN C., Da Spacewar! A Gears of War, o come limmagine videoludica diventata pi cinematografica, in Bianco e Nero, n. 564, 2009, p. 40.
POOLE S., Trigger happy: videogames and the entertainment revolution, New York, Arcade publishing 2004.
ROSS A., Celebration. La citt perfetta, Roma, Arcana 2001.
RUSCONI M., Potremmo esporre un bel temporale. Cortili, piazze, vie diventano gallerie darte in Corriere della sera,
11 ottobre 1969, p. 22.
SCHEGGI P., in RUSCONI M., Paolo Scheggi: Riempire un tempo come tempo di teatralit, in Sipario n. 276, 1969,
pp. 15-20, cit. p. 17.
SCOTTI M., Progetto e paesaggio digitale. Scritture e sguardi nella citt contemporanea in Pubblico Paesaggio.
Documenti del Festival dellArchitettura 4 2007-2008. Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Parma, FestivalArchitettura
Edizioni 2008, pp. 308-313.
TRINI T., testo non titolato, in MALL L, MARUSSI G, PASSONI F, TRUCCHI L, Nuovi Materiali Nuove Tecniche,
Cremona, Cremona Nuova 1969, n. p.
Walz S. P., Toward a Ludic Architecture: The Space of Play and Games, Pittsburgh, ETC Press 2010.
ZANELLA F., Forme e metodi di intervento nella citt, in CASERO C, DI RADDO E, Anni 70: larte dellimpegno, Milano,
Silvana Editoriale 2009, pp. 69-88.

225

MIC _ My Ideal City

3D web-sharing for a new vision of the cities

Alessio Cardaci, University of Bergamo - Faculty of Engineering
Antonella Versaci, University Kore of Enna - Faculty of Engineering and Architecture

1. Introduction
The Italian island of Sicily takes origin from the tension that divided it from the European continent: a tough and fierce
tear that torn it from the rest of the world, making Sicily an "island" in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea. The birth of
that Fretum, named "terrible" by Seneca, granted independence to the island, leaving it alone but at the same time,
giving Sicily the opportunity of having a center. Its heart beats exactly where this center is located: it seats in the town
of Enna, where the Normans built an octagonal tower to indicate the midpoint of the island, naming the town: Ombelicus
Siciliae. In the immediate surroundings, areas rich in history, as little known, are hidden: urban villages looking ideally at
the Tower of Frederick II, as their main point of reference.
The main purpose of this paper is to narrate a journey through the historical towns of Central Sicily, along an imaginary
itinerary that spreads concentrically from the heart of the island and has its points of departure and arrival in the town of
Enna. Walking through the ancient streets, pausing in the squares and living among the inhabitants, we have tried to
capture the soul of such places, both by the traditional sketches and the photos (rectified and referenced), or through
colored point clouds acquired by a digital sensor. Like the old architectural painters searched the most beautiful patches
to represent their ideal city, as technicians of the new era, we wandered around, looking for the most secret and
seductive corners: those architectural sites or elements able to communicate the true essence of the old island centers.
We wanted this to be a journey of discovery, having, however, also objectives of critical understanding and effective
cataloging. Therefore, on this trip, we used the classic, unchanging and always useful sketchbooks, although being, in
addition, supported by innovative detection techniques. The traditional pencil, was in fact, combined with the electronic
eye of the camera and the more advanced (lightest and fastest) 3D laser scanning instrument, able to permeate the
material and grasp the true nature of the architectural artifacts and of their urban contexts. Our tour was then a critical
travel among the architectural monuments of the most fascinating cities of Central Sicily, carried out by using several
surveying techniques, both classic and modern. This, in order to allow a revival of these areas, in which their main
actors are unfortunately, affected by urban pollution, congestion, and degradation phenomena.

2. Walking along the streets of Central Sicily, looking at its monuments

Central Sicily is, by now, relatively little known and studied in relation to the width of its historical and artistic treasures.
Contemporary tourist, like as the 18th-19th centuries travelers, continues to prefer classical or littoral areas of Sicily.
226

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 1. View of Enna

However, moving away from the coast, a more secret Sicily (quite an island in the island), not less interesting from
cultural and/or natural point of view, exists and needs to be valorised.
The founding of Enna goes back before the Greek period, dating from the 14th century BC. Following the Roman
domination, Enna was an important fortress for the Byzantines. Taken by the Saracens in 859, it was elected as the new
capital of the island and named Qasr Ynnah until 1087, when the Normans captured the town. The city's name was
then converted in the form of Castrogiovanni and so will remain until 1927 when it resumed the name of Enna. During
the Norman conquest, Castrogiovanni became an important cultural and political center of the kingdom. In 1130 Roger II
restored the ancient Sicanian fortress, now known as Castle of Lombardy, one of the most important and well maintained
medieval castles in Sicily. After the brief Angevin parenthesis, Enna rose again. In this period, several monuments were
restored and, at the behest of Queen Eleanor, wife of Frederick III of Sicily, the Duomo was founded in 1307. This
magnificent monument, based on a medieval structure, has over the centuries, undergone numerous renovation and
adaptation works. The main one dates from the 17th-18th centuries [1] when, an imposing faade, surmounted by a
massive campanile (a prototype of the towers-facades, realized in the south-east of Sicily at that time) was added [2].
Other rich expression of medieval architecture are the towers, originally elements of the imposing fortified sighting
system of Enna, then often integrated into ecclesiastic complexes. This is, for instance, the case of the Torre del
Carmine, marked by a strange semi-cylindrical lateral protrusion but containing also elements of a Renaissance
character; or that of San Tommaso, adjacent to the homonym Church and characterized by Catalan Gothic windows.
Last but not least, majestic, the already mentioned Torre di Federico II stands: a former military stronghold built in the
13th century, nowadays considered as one of the major symbols of the city.

227

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 2. Colored point clouds of the Church and former convent of San Domenico in Aidone

On the heights facing Enna, it is located Calascibetta, whose territory has been inhabited since ancient times, as
evidenced by the necropolis from the 9th to 5th century AC.. The town was later built by the Arabs and named KalathosScibeth and then expanded by Count Roger in 1062. In the southeast, there is Aidone, Arab-Norman city nicknamed "the
balcony of Sicily for its views and marked by the 16th centurys Church and former convent of San Domenico presenting
an ashlared faade; while on the southwest, we can find the city of Pietraperzia where, according to some, the ancient
Caulonia rose. Its current town center was established in medieval times around an Arab fortress then restored by the
Normans. It hosts the Cathedral Church, built in 1308 and rebuilt almost completely around 1500, in a larger and lavish
form. Leonforte lies north of Enna. Founded in 1610 by Branciforte family, it is dominated by their outstanding Palazzo
and by Granfonte, the monumental fountain built in 1652.
Historical documentation and researches about these monuments are very poor: both in terms of graphics and as
regards the critical analysis, except for the work produced by Walter Leopold, a young Italian-German engineer which
came to Sicily in 1910-11 to study the medieval architecture of the inner Sicily [3]. Although impressed by the accuracy
of this study and even if inspired by the interesting representation work of contemporaneous drawers, we have decided
not to re-walk the footsteps of our predecessors. Conscious of the fundamental importance of survey in the preparation
of restoration and conservation projects, we then based our work on a close integration between tools and
methodologies, both traditional and innovative. This, according to a mode of thought, not only based on a logical process
of historic and aesthetic nature, but supported by those intuitive and perceptive values that are stimulated only by the onsite observation.

228

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 3. Perspective view of the internal vault, Cathedrale of Pietraperzia

3. Survey for the Restoration project: between visual perception and analysis, among
tradition and innovation
In the past times, the representation of the city was mainly carried out by paintings and engravings. Those works of art
are today precious archives, both for architectural historians and for architect restorers. The lithographic prints of the
Grand Tour, the guides and albums of images designed to improve the aesthetic and cultural values of private reading
rooms, tell in iconographic way (at the same time, cataloging) monuments, landscapes and urban sites, now often no
more recognizable. The "life drawing" was, once, the means to recreate and tell the spatial feeling of the observed city,
the sketch was (and actually still is) a plausible restitution of the reality aimed at capturing the essence of the space seen
by the traveler (even if always mediated by his own personal interpretation). That of survey has historically been the
phase immediately subsequent in the approach of places: the eidotype added, in fact, to the space feeling, metric details
as well as material properties and formal aspects of the observed sites. Preliminary design, aimed at providing a
scientific and detailed knowledge of the studied sites, the eidotype was, essentially, a basic document, a kind of canvas
on which to set up and then develop further ideas [4]. The traditional technique required, actually, the elaboration of an
imposing mass of drawings aimed at documenting plans, elevations and architectural details of buildings, focusing on
their geometrical, linguistic and technical aspects. The advent of photography has partially modified this approach to the
city, enriching it with new contents and faces. Images obtained by cameras, seen as "fast sketchbooks [5], have
supported the traditional drawing techniques, putting at our disposal new important documentary tools. The photograph,
in fact, permits to render by images the citys fervor. Its capability of freezing the moment and blocking the action can
reveal moments so brief as to be normally imperceptible to the human eye. The camera offers the opportunity to create
229

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 4. Colored point clouds of the San Cataldos Church, Enna

(through the pictures) a linear and temporal chronicle, of great value for all those work in the field of protection and
valorisation of cultural heritage.
Nowadays, the laser scanning technology has completely revolutionized the surveying field. It ensures the possibility of
digitally capture three-dimensional objects, even very complex, and returns them as point clouds, in a very short time.
On the contrary to a drawing, they are not, however, a planar projection of a real object, as they represent a virtual
version of reality that can be investigated. If a drawing can be observed only from the center of projection from which the
designer has chosen to represent the scene, the point cloud can instead be questioned by several projective centers. It
is indeed possible to get more representation by changing from time to time the observation point of the architectural
work and of the city as a whole. Not less important, it is also the chance to investigate the 3D model, obtained by laser
scanning technology, in its morphological and/or compositional components.
As already mentioned, from a procedural point of view, the use of 3D laser scanning technology has dramatically
reduced execution time, because it unifies the initial phase of data acquisition and that of subsequent analysis. The
digital sketch, actually, provides metric survey and characterization of building materials of the city, at the same time,
observed and measured, both in its forms and in its structural components. Through this technique, the preparation of
the objects eidotype is less important than the survey planning, even if not required. It is, in fact, possible to fully detect
the geometry of an architectural object and then postpone to the phase of data processing (in the office), the extraction
of characteristic elements of the buildings and their representation through CAD [5].
In the framework of our tour, the digital acquirement of the monuments has been carried out through the Laser Scanner
Focus3D produced by CAM2-Faro Technologies, innovative instrument based on the phase shift technology, much
faster and more accurate than the traditional time-of-flight instruments. The survey projects have been developed by
230

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 5. Web-sharing documentation: the Granfonte, Leonforte

executing environmental 360 scans" so reducing in situ measurement time. The speed of data acquisition and
measurement given by this instrument is so higher to make it more affordable (in terms of reduction of working time) the
acquisition of whole information and then the cleaning of unnecessary point clouds, rather than to adjust the scanning
angle and the resolution in any single scan. One of the key parameters of the laser scanner is the scanning step: in other
words, the step between two points measured by the instrument. The first scanning systems only allowed very high
mesh step (of the order of centimeters) or required to work with higher resolution-levels, with subsequent increase of
scanning time. However, the Focus 3D permits to obtain colored and high-resolution point clouds, (10 dpi to 10 meters),
with very short acquisition times.
For this research, to the traditional target now obsolete, it was initially planned an eventual replacement by calibrated
spheres, because they do not need to be arranged orthogonally to the station: a simplification that in any case would not
result in a significant decrease in measuring time, due to the need of always placing the spheres near the buildings and
in places visible to more stations. The idea of telling the cities needed to cross them quickly (as quickly as a travelerdesigner who draws a landscape in half an hour) and to make several acquisitions in many different places. It has been
therefore preferred a much simpler survey methodology, which does not need any target or calibrated spheres, but
benefits of the combined and integrated utilization of different software (the FARO Scene 4.8 and the GEXCEL JRC
3D-Reconstructor). It should be noted that this instrument is not only extraordinarily light (5 kg), but it also integrates a
coaxial high resolution camera. This has allowed coloring point clouds in automatic way, considerably reducing postprocessing time. Measurements were then followed by processing of data measured in situ: the clouds were first filtered
and then aligned in order to obtain virtual models of the monuments and of significant fragments of the cities.

231

MIC _ My Ideal City

4. From the graphic representation for the Restoration project to the Web-sharing cataloguing
At the end of the phase of data acquisition, drawings, scans and photographs taken during the tour, were used to
represent and communicate information obtained. Pictures, sketches and colors were used to dress up, not only
chromatically, scans metric data. The restitution phase has allowed mapping the point clouds with images processed
and filtered in order to highlight the degradation state of materials and the most interesting architectural elements. The
point clouds have been mapped with a kind of tailor made dresses: images of the architectural monuments, taken at
different times of the day (including night images). Thats because the colorimetric information obtained by laser scanner
is no longer a simple representation of the reality, but it may be precious both in the diagnostic and monitoring phases.
The usual practice is to represent in false colours the reflectance values resulting from the scans (famous is the change
from green to red, performed by Leica scanners depending to temperature and reflectance variations); it is rather less
usual to process images using software that can alter the RGB channels, the hue, the saturation and brightness [6, 7].
The mapping of several images properly treated with the filters available in the most common image editing applications,
allows representing situations barely visible or completely hidden from a visual examination. A filter providing the edge
contrast may highlight the masonry wall textures, the noise & grain reduction filter can hide the dark areas due to the
unevenness of the plaster, allowing an easier reading of the geometry, or even the render lighting effect filter permits to
detect lighting them- only the areas of interest.
Finally, attempting to implement new forms of representation of the degradation and deterioration of material surfaces,
our scans have also been dressed by drawings showing the mapping of stone deterioration of buildings, elaborated by
the students of the course of Architectural Restoration (a.a. 2009-2010) of the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture of
Enna (Italy).

5. Conclusions
By the integration of all these techniques, we obtained a rich database, to make universally accessible through Web
platforms, whose value is inestimable, not only to ensure today a proper restoration and valorisation of the monuments,
but also in the future, in order to understand their evolution in the frame of an urban environment, always in movement.
With the aim of realizing a web-shared catalogue of the monuments of Central Sicily, acquired data have been converted
into 3D models which are being progressively published on the Net. The scan processing software used for this research
incorporates a specific one-click WebShare function. This application makes it possible to publish scanned data on the
Internet, thus enabling everyone to share scanned images, including metric, technical and material property information.
Unlike photographs, which deliver only the image of the monument, the 3D model can be sliced in order to obtain crosssections and plans; it can be processed to create orthophotos; finally it can provide useful data about chemical and
physical properties of the artifacts, as well as of their states of health. Then scans can, in addition, be geo-referenced (by
Google Street View for example). Unlike the images, however, the model obtained from a point cloud is an incredible
database, a kind of "solid" photograph which allows to penetrate the material state of an architectural object.
The new frontier of laser scanning methodology offers then new important opportunities for cataloging and storing
cultural goods ensuring, over time, the transmission of valuable information about their state of conservation and
restoration work carried-out, in order to safeguard their authenticity.
232

MIC _ My Ideal City

References
[1] GAROFALO E., La rinascita cinquecentesca del duomo di Enna, Caracol, Palermo 2007.
[2] BOSCARINO S., Sicilia Barocca, architettura e citt 1610-1770, Roma 1981.
[3] LEOPOLD W., Sizilianische Bauten des Mittelalters in Castrogiovanni, Piazza Armerina, Nicosia und Randazzo.
Berlino, 1917.
[4] VASSENA G., SGRENZAROLI M., Tecniche di rilevamento tridimensionale tramite laser scanner, Starrylink, Brescia
2007.
[5] DOCCI M., Manuale di rilevamento architettonico e urbano, Laterza, Bari-Roma 2009.
[6] CARBONARA G., Trattato di restauro architettonico. Secondo Aggiornamento. Grandi temi di restauro, UTET, Torino
2008.
[7] FIORANI D., Restauro e tecnologie in architettura, Carocci, Roma 2009.

233

MIC _ My Ideal City

Stratified landscapes: the image of conscious memory

Juan Carlos DallAsta Gutirrez, Politecnico di Milano

The places that we know do not belong to the world of space where we place them for convenience. They were only a tiny fragment of contiguous
impressions which formed our lives since then, the memory of a certain image is but regret for a moment, and the houses, streets, avenues, are
fleeting, alas! As the years.
Marcel Proust, Search of Lost Time

The complex stratigraphy of the contemporary settlement shows simultaneously the beginning and the end, the
continuation and conclusion, continuity and fragmentation of urban formations in which the different traces in the
underlying layers are updated. These changes, which follow one another in a continuous metamorphosis, are revealed
as the result of discontinuous processes of construction and destruction of residual assets, now evident in urban
architectural practices like "building over built" and " designing over pre-existences."
The main background on which this operation takes place is the contemporary city, the city that embodies the
discontinuity of the process of finding an plural image, which discards a never reached utopian unity, since it has lost
contact with its center becoming a generic urban magma, excessively large and overly homogenous.
No history, no references, no identity, the contemporary city is free of restrictions, yet it feels incomplete and awkward.
To respond to this feeling of disorientation, the city became a machine that produces all that it is missing beginning with
identity.
"Urban magma' is meant as all that is indifferent and homogeneous, in other words, without form. Identity eventually will
be found in shape and distinction. The staging of stratification, through a landscape in which the construction process
coexist simultaneously in the same place at the same time, takes place through three main operations: overlay,
substitution and transcription. These three steps allow us to grasp the meaning of human settlements and, from an early
exploration, to trace the footprint of the original and founding urban biography. The layers (maps) become indispensable
elements to investigate the embracing process of the fundamental elements of urban development.
The ground is interpreted as a stratified mater, sedimentary deposit of interfering elements, such as diagrams
materialized over time by different processes of transformation and as a deeply written territory, marked by the events
that have deformed, crossed it. The ground is read as a complex text, marked by an infinite number of signs.
"The city represents a special way to structure a particular mater [...] that seems to have a particular structural and
functional complexity; consisting of a huge variety of materials operable architecture, comprehending a particular
capacity of recording historical stratification of traces, a particularly high value attributed to them by the community, ie. it

234

MIC _ My Ideal City

can not be seen merely as a real estate phenomenon, and even more emphatically that the local environment it involves
values and meanings1.
In a context of relentless change the only distinctive character of a city is collective memory: "the city itself is the
collective memory of the people"2. Memory is the conscience of the city, its qualitative source, the connection between
past and future. Layers, rubble, ruins, full of sense of reality emerge from the stratification. It is, therefore, to create a
model of a conscious collective memory, where the key word is awareness.
Architecture is not an independent discipline it cannot be completely separated from other disciplines. For its survival it
must be tied to the past and looking towards the future and this is not possible without an urban analysis involving
archeology, geography and history.
Geography is the description of the earth (from the greek GHE, earth and graphite, from Graphein, writing), it suggests
that the Earth is a script to decipher. The signs of transformation on the stratification are the deterministic part of life that
is creative evolution, seeking support and reference for its changing journey.
Archaeology studies the interactions between man and his environment, and especially the processes of cultural
transformation that is reflected in the story.
These three disciplines provide valuable tools capable of detecting an act of persistence, which generates an action of
identification.
The city is growing exponentially and disordered, and today only careful investigation of strata can lead to a primitive
differentiation process we can rediscover the answer to current urban state. This will be through geography representing
the external identity, which is the codified expression of human settlement, and through archeology, which indicates the
visible material trace of evolutionary or retrogressive processes by layers, review in the memory of the place.
In the process of completion or replacement of centers on centers the enduring value of the place is strongly reaffirmed,
condensing fundamental urban functions and strategies.
The recognition of the geographical field as a generator of traces and dominant forms, in a field saturated with signs and
archeological findings, becoming a syntactic writing operation of soil by the value of the interpretive geographic
morphogenetic sign, where the primitive ordering potential in a confused contemporary context.
The transcript from archeology to architectural design is an order of present elements in the field as well as ordering
future design elements. Ruins become an active building principle, being a key element of material culture; it finds the
ability to generate in the future projection a structuring system of new urban spaces able to outlive their own time.
The layer, in its archeological dimension, is always projected into the future as a bearer of conscious memory, or of
wealth and range of meanings in which the new urban space is between today and tomorrow, becoming, if pregnant with
meaning, a ruin in the future.
Stratification is implemented by superimposing in chronological order the key instrument of representation, in other
words the map. The term map includes all the plan metric representations of previous historical periods, generally
defined as historical thresholds. The term plan refers to current plan metric representations, including representations
that identify infrastructure and networks in general. By overlaying the maps, you achieve stratification and the meaning
of this operation is to make visible what we commonly walk but never really see. The abstraction has therefore made the
1
2

Vittorio Gregotti, Il territorio dellarchitettura, Feltrinelli, Milano 2008, p. 65.

Aldo Rossi, Larchitettura della citt, Clup, Milano 1996, p. 191.

235

MIC _ My Ideal City

ability to bring to the surface changes that have taken place. It is putting on the same plane different moments in time
that we can summarize the process of urban development including all its components.
As in a text written repeatedly, the city reveals interfering levels corresponding to different types of landscapes, images,
man made places, memories and signs, evidence of the multiple stages of development. Not a simple inhabited surface
but a ground built up over time in complex stratification, the city is the result of a process of assimilation in the
transformation and sedimentation in change.
A text consisting of several overlapping grounds, stratified, interfering for which excavating becomes a gesture of prior
knowledge. Throughout this process ruins are discovered, their recovery is not only a historical testimony, but it assumes
the value of understanding modifying attitude and the principle by which to base the new settlement because ruins are
where past and future meet. The Ruin introduces a time dimension hierarchy in which each vanishes. Through the
transcription of signs, deeply inscribed in the traces of soil, one can understand the permanence and variability, what
remains and what has been lost forever.
Due to a simultaneous reading of layers and periods it becomes possible to see which elements are maintained over
time and what kind of transformation takes place on the same open space, such as change in buildings shape, use and
meaning.
"The city grows on itself, acquiring consciousness and memory of itself. In its construction the originating reasons remain
meanwhile the city states and modifies the reasons for their development [...]"3.
The essential stratification of coexisting layers of infrastructural networks defines the character as a meeting point
between different types and velocity of commuting and use of the landscape / environment.
The layered landscapes show the image of conscious memory and the various layers making up a city can only be read
simultaneously. This simultaneous reading of the landscape is the layered image of conscious memory.
The city and its spaces are called to guide the transformation process of the history they embody is the scenario on
which we reveal the tangible results.
"The city in its vastness and its beauty is a creation born from many different stages, the unity of these moments is the
urban unit as a whole, the ability to read the city lies in continuity with its pre-eminent formal and spatial character."4
In a simultaneous reading of a settlements layers and different periods it is possible to check which elements are
preserved in the change of use, which guidelines are reused in the change of trails and paths, what transformation takes
place on the same open space to move from one enclosure to a square. What elements change shape, meaning and
use, but above all, it becomes possible to see what survives the radical change because "The city is not only an object of
perception [...], but it is also the product of many operators that for specific reasons are constantly changing structure"5.
A simultaneous look allows us to retrace survival as a "indecomposable urban matter ' or revelation of deep primitive
traces, to draw not only a valid criteria of knowledge, but also an area of design methodologies for the city of the future"
to design amongst preexistences. " The resulting image is clear and that is generally applicable to groups of local
identity.

Ivi, p. 3.
Ivi, p. 65.
5 5Kevin Lynch, Limmagine della citt, Marsilio Editori, Venezia 1985, p. 23.
3
4

236

MIC _ My Ideal City

This is a clear picture because, despite evolutionary complexity, the original form and guidelines are progressively
tracable. Knowing how to apply a historical multiple image in some cases produces the multicultural reconstruction of a
conscious memory. It means being able to see and anticipate the evolutionary characters of a system and provide sound
proposals for contemporary design.
Often in environmental and urban planning, the sign of memory in a secularized territory is so thin as to become a quiet
reference, or too faint to be recognized. Memory, however, is physically reconstituted in its geometric matrix, organically
anchored to a centre established by a mesh (the plot) physically visible and accessible. The design is manifested as a
conscious and permanent gesture, respectful of a both multiform and millennial order.
The contemporaneity of proposed spaces of new design vertebrate structures emerge, not alienated or supine to an
amorphous expansion of an uncontrollable organism, as has sometimes been erroneously claimed.
The space that emerges is a responsible place, present in its own memory, as only truly contemporary architecture is
able to demonstrate when it manages to outlive its own time.

237

MIC _ My Ideal City

Utopy and comics imaginary cities

Michela De Domenico, DiSIA, University of Messina

1. Introduction
Urban settings of comics and animated movies, often adopted in movies, have contributed to create, into collective
imagination, a concrete idea of utopian city, fell in social and urban contexts, utopian or dystopian, well-defined. An
unconventional architecture takes often origin in these settings. It requires neither to stand, nor to provide real spaces
since architectures belong to fantasy. By glancing its languages, comics rework daily experience and real ambient,
through multiple points of view. There is a strong affinity between architects and cartoonists, both drawing architectures
that do not exist. They try different solutions to introduce the city through the urban scenarios; they have the same
memory and architectural imagination1. These visions, transposed on paper through drawings, are developed in an ideal
spatial model that does not meet the laws of physics and three-dimensional space perception, whose only limit is
creativity. The unrealistic geometries or Giovanni Battista Piranesis2 and Tsutomu Niheis3 are two examples.
References, to the ideal city and to the utopias imagination, are frequent in the settings of futuristic comics. Although
with different targets and contents, same language is often shared by fantastic city of comics and city of utopias:
megacities, underground or flying cities, styles of past and references to archetypes, are combined with technologies of
the future. However, contrary to the non-places/ou-topos created by Sir Thomas More, important for their speculative
and social value but indifferent to their location in physical places, the urban settings of comic fantasy become
metaphors to test the concrete representation of a place utopian4.
Paraphrasing the syncretic view of creation, expressed in the Table of emerald5 by Hermes Trismegistus and resumed in
Alejandro Jodorowsky Incal saga6, in this paper we analyze three examples of cities in the comics and three model of
ideal cities, through a method that highlights grammar tools, compositions, languages, styles and real, or imaginary,
architecture references: the heavenly city, the earthly city and the underground city.

CIORCOLINI L., Il testimone reticente, in CONTROSPAZIO. Roma, Gangemi editore, 2005. n. 117, p. 8-21.
MARTELLA, L., La citt disegnata di Piranesi. In MEZZETTI Carlo. Dalle citt ideali alla citt virtuale. Roma: Edizioni Kappa, 2005.
3 Hes a comics author, borned in Fukushima in 1971, he studied architecture in USA and later returned to Japan finding in mangas world the
space to imagine parallel universes for own architecture.
4 OPPEDISANO, F.O., Il cinema di fantascienza come luogo della significazione dello spazio utopico. In MEZZETTI Carlo. Dalle citt ideali alla citt
virtuale. Roma: Edizioni Kappa, 2005.
5 The Emerald Tablet is the most famous document of the Hermetic writings and is attributed to Hermes Trismegistus.
6 Chilean director, novelist and playwright from surreal style, author with Moebius of Incal comics saga.
1
2

238

MIC _ My Ideal City

1.1 What is below: Ter 21

Men always considered the underground as dwelling of gods and demons, or as a space populated by unknown
7

civilization like Akakor in South America. Actually, some cultures have been considered the subsoil as a place where to
settle, the subterranean architecture of Fairy Chimneys in Anatolia and the Sassi of Matera, are two out of the samples.
At the beginning of 20th century Herbert George Wells wrote that the city of the third millennium would be dug in the hills
so it wouldnt be populated by skyscrapers. In facts, utopian-military projects, as the nuclear shelter near Pittsburgh of
Max Abramovitz commissioned by the U.S. Government and the Seines underground city by Paul Maymont,
approach the narratives of science-fiction and comic books, where inventions of underwater and underground cities are
many, like the Amar by Brick Bradford and the Ter 21 by Moebius.

Figure 1. Moebius, Dan OBannon, The long tomorrow, 1976

Moebius, the French artist Jean Giraud, who was born in Nogent-sur-Marne in 1938, is the creator of parallel universes
able to influence the world of imagination, also outside of comics. His working method research the ecstasy in creation,
to achieve a perceptive condition through drawing, evoking the Surrealist vocabulary of fixed explosion and the vigilant
dream8 and approaches the meditative state of Oriental philosophies. Through simple and strong design, bright colours
and dramatic stories, the environment ceases being mere background to the characters actions to become connection
to a metaphysical world coming from psychedelic, where adventure and symbolism are crossed through an essential and
enigmatic sign. Architectures, of environments in his comics, come from selected combinations of matching,
9

metamorphosis, deformation, estrangement, nonsense, in line with the Surrealists techniques. In a recent conference

he explains how forms arise from a pure graphic process: at the beginning the drawing is aleatory, where spirals, zigzag

The chronicle of Akakor (Die Chronik von Akakor, 1976) which deals with the myths of the original Indians of South America have been reported
by German journalist Karl Brugger, together with those of other 13 cities hidden in Peru and Brazil.
8 GRILLO Eduardo, Tensione e ritmo nel corso del testo: analisi del fumetto Arzach, in E/C rivista dellAssociazione Italiana di Studi Semiotici online. http://www.ec-aiss.it/, 2007.
9 Herv Le Guyader, Moebius, Les Nomades soirees, "Chimres et Mtamorphoses" at the Fondation Cartier, Paris.
7

239

MIC _ My Ideal City

and dashes, gradually form shapes in a process similar to surrealists graphics. The hyper-technological component of
this architecture is blended with magic-supernatural components, making ambiguous and surreal environments.
In the story The Long Tomorrow published in 1976 by Les Humanoids Associes, the city developed into a gash in the
bowels of the planet (Fig 1), stratified in multiple levels connected by a web of bridges, stairs and elevators. The result is
a chaotic and tangled urban space, evoking the vegetative apparatus. The buildings, as in the Japanese cities, extend in
all directions with no apparent homogeneity, reminiscent of a mix among buildings typical of the North African casbah
and high-tech bunkers.
In the Incals saga, written by Alexandro Jodorowsky and published between 1981 and 1988, the story evolves into a
game of archetypes and surrealist symbols, where the traditional sci-fi themes are reformulated. The city-well Ter-21, in
the galaxy's human, using the urban inventions of "The Long Tomorrow", has a circular shape and is distributed across
multiple levels separated according to specific social criteria. The top end is a cone populated by elite people, under
which lie other layers like the bottom sewer-dump and the red ring. Surrounded by an acid lake, where the waste is
dissolved, the dump has a tower, dug at its centre, that allows access to the underground world of Earth-centre, marking
the beginning of the journey toward the purification.

Figure 2. Paolo Soleri, Arcology: the city in the image of man, 1969

This Moebius urban vision, rich in symbolism and references, formally ended and split by functional parts, find common
points with the Arcology10 by Paolo Soleri, a visionary project dating back to 196911 (Fig 2). The city is developed as a
super organism isolated in the desert, stratified on multiple levels partly excavated in a canyon in order to compress and
compact urban structures and combat urban sprawl. At the top end of Arcologys centre, surrounded by highways, raises

10
11

Arcology is a neologism, also used in science fiction, combining the words architecture and ecology.
SOLERI P., Arcology, the city in the image of men. London: Mit press Cambrige, 1969.

240

MIC _ My Ideal City

an inverted cone that contains the most important social functions and the public and commercial activities at the bottom.
A ring around the larger cone, partially dug into the canyon, represents the area of residential buildings.
At the same time the Soleris city is self-sufficient for energy production, climate distribution and recycling. The used
energy and materials converge in a sort of dump-funnel placed underneath the city where, like in a womb, return back to
mother earth to be recycled. On the contrary of the dystopia in Ter 21, Soleris vision is focused to the utopia of a fair
society, eco-oriented, self-sufficient and able to live in harmony with the nature. Common with the vision of Moebius /
Jodorowsky is the animistic concept of reality and architecture12. The Soleris theoretical work, is realized through the
experiment of a real city, smaller size compared to Arcology, located in the desert of Arizona: Arcosanti, is a city
designed for 5,000 inhabitants, under construction from over 30 years and still incomplete, because built by craft
volunteers who follow the original design and using only local materials.

1.2 What is between: Les Cites Obscures

The myth of the ideal city was born in Greece with the polis, defined as political and philosophical ideal in Plato's
dialogues of Republic and Laws, finally turned into an utopian form in his description of Atlantis in the Critias and in the
Timaeus. Throughout the Middle Age, the myth of the ideal city is intended as a model on Earth of the heavenly city
described in De Civitate Dei by St. Augustine. Since 400, the ideal city becomes princes' instrument of hegemony
through the urban design of the city-fortress that, in Sforzinda of Filarete, reaches the top of its expression. During the
Age of Enlightenment, utopian projects reflect the demands of social equity and progress that found expression in the
phalanstre first, and in the industrial city13 later.

Figure 3. Xhystos: Francois Shuiten, Benoit Peeters, Les Cites Obscures, Les murailles de Samaris, 1982
12
13

SOLERI Paolo, Quaderni: Ideas, Programs, Projects. 2002.

Cfr. AAVV, La citt dellutopia, Milano: Garzanti Sheiwiller. 1999.

241

MIC _ My Ideal City

Apparently, Les Cites obscures by the Belgian Francois Schuiten and the French Benoit Peeters belongs to the latter
strand and, in the homonymous comic book series published by Casterman in 1982, delivers a diachronic time-space
where architecture and urbanism, among the nineteenth and twentieth century, is used to represent towns and places in
non-time universes. The city is the core element of these stories, seen as an utopian and abstract principle, as well as a
machine in which man becomes marginal, annihilated like a puppet. The architecture, indifferent to man and memories,
is obsessively repeated and the city self-generates its clones. Les Cites obscures are cities that belong to the
imaginarys dimension, same as described by Italo Calvino in Le citt invisibili, while Schuiten drives the minds to great
artists of the past, from Gustave Dore and Giovan Battista Piranesi to the American comics master Winsor McCay.14.
The steampunks15 settings are developed in an industrial visionary age, characterized by the advanced use of steam
technology, by modern materials such as plastic and by historical styles, as Art Nouveau. The series is set in the citystate of a mysterious parallel world called the Dark World, where the fantastic architecture figures communicate, through
the used style, how the city wants to appear.

Figure 4. Tony Garnier, La cit industrielle, 1917

So in Xhystos city (Fig 3), that appears in the episode Les Murailles de Samaris, published in 1982 in the journal A
suivre, a city that is a mixture of advanced technology and nineteenth-century bureaucracy is represented through Art
Nouveau lines mediated by Victor Hortas Brussels and Hector Guimards Paris and forms and materials of the

Cfr. Ucronie della belle epoque in ALBERGHINI Andrea, Sequenze urbane: la metropoli nel fumetto. Delta Comics: Rovigo, 2006.
It 's a science fiction setting features a dystopian future in which advanced sciences such as cybernetics, robotics and computer science, are
associated with '80s underground culture and style of the and to instances of social rebellion.

14
15

242

MIC _ My Ideal City

"engineers' architecture". A utopian city, isolated, built on purpose, by a consistent design, where the apparently
innovative architectures are actually intended to reinforce the structure of power.
From another point of view, Xhystos approaches the vision of Tony Garnier's Industrial City (Fig 4) as an image without
reality, as he wrote. But while Garnier naively imagines a balance between nature and industrialization in order to
produce a social change, in Xhystos northern city from cool colours there are neither traces of nature nor of freedom.
It appears as an artifice, mediation among nature and technology, through buildings whose structure is made by metal
and glass looking like plants and where columns become stems. Thus the utopian vision of a Garnier of an industrious
and progressive city is transformed in dystopia, a reality closely controlled by the power of bureaucracy, product of the
city itself.
Samaris (Fig. 5) appears as the opposite of Xhystos, a south city with tall and smooth deltoidal walls, reminiscent of
Tibetan monasteries, topped by Islamic domes, which communicate a feeling of closure and inaccessibility to foreigners.
Inside, the city appears as a stage where late Renaissance architecture acts, as a codified memory program, to
foreigners who need to grasp the city order and strictness. Same as in the ideals projects of fortress-city in the
Renaissance, also the design of Samaris complies with an abstract logic, not identified by visitors, whose purpose is to
be an instrument of control by the government.
In fact, behind the facades that evoke a kind of Strada Nova, several hidden scenic mechanisms, driven by hydraulic
devices that run on a tangle of rails and able to modify the urban structure in time of danger, live together. The city turns
out to be a hoax, a sham, a trompe l'oeil city that operates traps to defend its integrity. Its an anthropomorphic and
thinking city with a head and limbs, like in the drawings of man-city-fortress by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, dynamic
interaction between predictability and unpredictability, mechanisms of connection between past and future, unstable
landscapes, the city is not real and its mysterious space evokes a non-Euclidean dimension. Schuiten and Peeters
connect Samaris and Xhystos in a kind of Moebius strip16 in a poetic of duplication that recurs in other episodes.

1.3 What is above: Laputa

Man has always tried to impress cosmological meanings in the rituals of city's foundation, drawing geometric schemes
that reflect, through location and orientation, mediated symbolism of sky. The Aristophanes Nubicuculia, the city of
birds, represents a fantasy parallel of a flying city, which becomes satire metaphor of politics of its times. The Jewishs
heavenly Jerusalem revival in the Apocalypse of John, restated in the Middle Ages through the De Civitate Dei of St.
Augustine17, clearly reflects religious symbolism in actual shapes and sizes coming from the iconography of medieval
towns: the high walls where 12 doors are inserted, the temple shaped town-square. Also in the prototype of the ideal city
theres a desire of perfection resulting from the worldly city, an event in the land of divine radiance.
In 1986, Hayo Miyazaki, one of the most important animes18 authors, realized for the Ghibli studio his first movie Laputa:
Castle in the Sky Tenk no shiro Rapyuta (). The setting, which comes from Laputa, the floating

Cfr. ALBERGHINI A., Sequenze urbane. Cit.

Cfr. Bettetini M., La citt celeste cristiana, in La citt dellutopia, op.cit.
18 Cartoons derived from the comic series, through which the graphical style of Japanese comics (manga) has spread worldwide.
16
17

243

MIC _ My Ideal City

island described by Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, associates steam punk19 references to the heavenly citys
archetype. Laputa is in fact the legendary castle wheel, abandoned for centuries by its inhabitants, keeping the secret of
a forgotten and advanced technology that allows the city to travel in the sky, hidden by clouds for hundreds of years (Fig
7). Starting from the movies headlines, the graphic style evokes the nineteenth-century lithographs, where, among the
movement of dirigibles and flying machines that run through the sky, several different kind of floating cities make their
appearance: stone buildings like skyscrapers, castle wheels, cities looking like stone vessels, the result of a advanced
technology and retro style, representatives of an Arcadia no more trusting in science and progress. Laputa is last
survivor that collects the rests of a far past, an abandoned ruin miraculously suspended in the sky, whose rests are
plagued by the vegetation grown with no rules, reminiscent of the temples of Angkor. Built around a spherical globe, it
has seven main levels of coaxial walls, surmounted by cylindrical towers topped with domes. The spherical nucleus is
internally split into several layers: at the centre, a Platonic solid (a bright blue octahedron contained within a nucleus of
roots) is the source of energy that allows Laputa, although its weight, to float in the air. Outside, the overlapping curtain
walls linked each other by stairways, bridges and arches have blind arcades and windows with lancet and ogee
arches. At the embattled top edge, surmounted by cylindrical towers topped with domes, there is a platform, a roof
garden with water channels and Greek columns. In the crown lush vegetation whose huge top, standing like an umbrella
from the top of the towers, is enclosed in a glasshouse, reminiscent of the iron and glass architecture of the nineteenth
century. For a kind of magic, from the glasshouse the sight of the walls disappears and only the profile of windows
frames is visible.

Figure 7. Laputa: caste in the sky,Tenk no shiro Rapyuta, (). H. Miyazaki, 1986

The setting takes place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, in a ucronic world, above the modern electricitys applications, which
uses the steam engines technology for advanced purpose, as the flight.

19

244

MIC _ My Ideal City

If, from the iconographic point of view, Laputa evokes the Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel, painting of 1563 (Fig 8),
ideally it takes from the prototype of the City of the Sun, by Tommaso Campanella20 in 1602. The City of the Sun is
placed in that utopians vein born with Plato and continued by Thomas More, that will have its rivals in the Howards
garden city and in the visionary architects such as Ledoux and Boullee. Same as Laputa, the City of the Sun is
concentric, consisting by seven large rings of walls where towers stand out and by a central element that stands on
the top, protecting the spiritual essence of the city: it was the temple of the sun in the city of Campanella and the shrine
of the trees in the city of Miyazaki. However, moving close to the highest platform of the city, the presence of water
channels and Greek columns, seems taking us to the Atlantis that was described in Platos Critias21. Its clear the strong
symbolic connotations in Laputa. The sphere that supports the city represents the Earth, but also the cosmos perfection.
Inside this, the core that allows the city to fly is an octahedron, one of the five solids that Plato describes in the Timaeus,
gathering the Pythagorean tradition.

Figure 7. Pieter Brueghel, Tower of Babel, 1563

20
21

CAMPANELLA T., La citt del sole, Feltrinelli, 2003

In the Critias, Plato described Atlantis as a hill enclosed by different sizes concentric circles, two mades ground and three mades water.

245

MIC _ My Ideal City

2. Conclusions
The examples of this trilogy, although varied, seem all being characterized by a strong orientation to the transformation
and metamorphosis, and by a push toward a dystopian dimension. The urban image, multiple and overlapping, hides
dimensions behind its facades. Living and anthropomorphic cities, with head and limbs, are able to modify their
structures according to external conditions, or according to their own wills. Man becomes secondary and defenseless,
overwhelmed by mega-cities that represent his own creations. These city visions take over, in negative, the same role as
the architecture in the utopian attempt to improve society, showing how it could become in a dystopian future.
Same as this, it intends to develop architectural fantastic and unconventional visions, that we find in some architecture
veins from Libeskind to Eisenman, from Zaha Hadid to Rem Koolhaas. In the same visionary vein, however, we find the
researches of architects like Lebbeus Woods, Marcos Novak, Felix Robbins, Himma Coop(l)blau, which intend to escape
from present to explore other worlds. Their architectures, posed in between comics and architectural dimension, seem
as living by their own life. The hypothesis is that its possible through cases of comics that have a total creative
freedom although share with architecture a common graphic representation area to recognize the inventive
mechanisms that contributes to increase city imagery and to rebuild reality in new shapes and roles.

References
AA VV, Controspazio. Roma: Gangemi, n. 117, 2005.
AA VV, Domus La nuova utopia. Milano: Editoriale Domus, n. 945, 2011.
ALBERGHINI A., Sequenze urbane: la metropoli nel fumetto, Rovigo: Delta Comics, 2006.
ANNESTAY J. by, Moebius Jodorowsky, I misteri dellIncal. Montepulciano: EditorI del Grifo, 1991.
BENEVOLO L., PUGLIESE CARRATELLI G., BETTETINI M., CANTONE G., INCISA DI CAMERANA L., FAGIOLO M.,
ROMANO M., GREGOTTI V., LANZAVECCHIA G., La citt dellutopia. Milano: Garzanti Sheiwiller. 1999.
CAMPANELLA T., La citt del sole. La Spezia: FME, 1990.
MEZZETTI C., by, Dalle citt ideali alla citt virtuale. Roma: Edizioni Kappa, 2005.
NIGRELLI F. C., by, Metropoli immaginate. Roma: Manifesto libri, 2001.
SANTUCCIO S., Lutopia nellarchitettura del 900. Firenze: Alinea editrice, 2003.
SCHUITEN F., PEETERS B., Le citt oscure. Le mura di Samaris. Milano: Lizard, 2002.
SOLERI P., Arcology, the city in the image of men. London: Mit press Cambrige, 1969.
SPILLER N., Visionary Architecture, Blueprints of the Modern Imagination, London: Thames & Hudson, 2007.

246

MIC _ My Ideal City

Looking for modernitylooking for heritage.

Overlapping European imageries on Sub-Saharan urban environment
Filippo De Dominicisa, Sapienza Universit di Roma
Ilaria Giannettia, Universit degli studi di Roma Tor Vergata

1. European imageries Sub-Saharan environment

A reality that pre-exists to its own discovery, built through stories, accounts, descriptions, and inventions. A set scene, on
which Europeans, both travellers and colonizers, project their own experience and values. This is the way in which the
desert takes part in that western reverie, which is aspiration to a mythic golden age that can still be traced and thought in
some corner of the world.
Felix Dubois, a French journalist on a mission for Le Figaro, arrives at Djenn for the first time in 1894, and reveals the
town heiress to the Songhay Empire to the world. He describes Djenn as a town intact in its forms, the same forms that,
in 1324, Mansa Musa and Al-Sahili imported from Egypt returning from a long pilgrimage (Prussin, 1994; Preston Blier,
2004). What appears to Dubois eyes is a mirage, perhaps the most common topos used to represent the illusion of
waiting that, far from vanishing, brings us back the image of an unaltered town where time seems to have almost
stopped in a dimension suspended between the evocation of a disappeared reality and the projection of a renewed
imagery. Dubois describes the outcome of his own expectations, dreams, built on the dreams and hopes of those who
preceded him. A mythic figure takes shape, which is that of the town beyond the desert. This is a virtual representation
of a world that has already been imagined and that pre-exists to its own discovery.
Leo Africanus, Mungo Park, Heinrich Barth and Ren Caille, by overlapping travel chronicles upon historical news,
contribute to shape an autonomous universe ready to be flown over by an air balloon. In 1864, Jules Vernes publishes in
Paris Cinq semaines en ballon, (Prussin, 1994) the imaginative reconstruction of an adventurous travel that, passing
through Africa from Zanzibar to Saint-Louis, collects and spreads all fantasies and impressions suggested by the first
European explorers. The reality from the balloon narrated by Verne, builds independently as if it were an autonomous
parallel reality in time and space, far from the true flowing of life, and only possible thanks to a means, namely the air
balloon popular in Europe since almost a century. It is by distorting the worlds nature that it modifies its usual
perception.
The explorers fleeting experiences, which were generally organized by the newly born Geographic Societies, express as Jules Vernes first story from his Voyages extraordinaires does - the possibility of a reality that is alternative, distant,
a

Par. 1, 2, 3 are written together by the authors.

247

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 1. Ren Caill, sketch of Timbuktu, 1830

Figure 2. An illustration from Cinq semaines en ballon, Jules Verne, 1864

exotic, packed ad hoc thanks to the instruments that only the European progress allows (the balloon, the first
photographic material, etc.). When the imagery - auto produced by western men - is followed without any cognitive
aspiration, it becomes, besides being a pretext to escape in time and space, a refuge by a mythic nature of which the
origins precede history.
Borderline cases of a cyclic reaffirmation of urban reality on the territory, Figuig (an oasis town on the border between
Morocco and Algeria), and Djenn (an island town on the inland delta of the Niger river), represent the two geographical
and thematic extremes useful for a first reflection on the identitary features of the towns on the edge of the Sahara
desert.
The survival of the towns risen on the edge of the desert is the result of a complex ecology; the sequence of always
different states of balance almost a mechanism of auto regulation is the function of the relations established from
time to time by the settlement in case of a tough geography (Guibbert, 1982).
The slow change of these relations constitutes a continuous occasion of transformation for Djenn. The transformation
facing the beginning of the twentieth century is an urban reality, which is the result of those historical events that
progressively determine the nature of this reality. The urban structure reveals the traces left by all those who contribute
to make the whole constantly commensurate with the conditions for the environment, from the magic dimension of the
constructive knowledge guarded by the maons cyclically represented to the community through the rite of crepissage
to the mercantile reality imposed by the geographic conditions and witnessed by the variety of spaces modelled on the
basis of the artisans and craftsmen activities.
The result is a form that is manifestation of all those necessities essential for the community to continually re-adapt to
urban life. Since the first settlements of Bozo fishers, Djenn has reaffirmed each time its own identitary character by,
first, modifying its structure and organising itself in neighbourhoods, heirs to the originally scattered villages; second,
welcoming Moroccan representatives (after 1591) and tukulor (Kingdom of Seku Amadu, 1834); finally, coming to its own
configuration of spaces, which is typical and recognizable (Preston Blier, 2004). At this purpose, the events linked to the
reconstruction of the Great Mosque - widely investigated by L.Prussin and J.L.Bourgeois - represents a crucial passage
that is fundamental to interpret the overlapping that characterises the urban space in Djenn. The Great Mosque, for its
248

MIC _ My Ideal City

dimension, location, and exceptional relation established with the social fabric, can be certainly considered the
expression of all relations woven by the community, evidence of all specificity and stratification of which the urban reality
is the result (Prussin, 1968; Bourgeois, 1987).
Figuig rises as a self-sufficient centre with a defensive nature. It is isolated in the middle of the hammada (the African
rocky desert), and is built around the only resource able to guarantee development and survival, namely water.
The oasis nature is artificial and is the result of alteration and continuous modification. This is a built nature that,
constantly maintained, survives thanks to men and is fundamental for their survival in reciprocal relationships of
dependence.
Identitary features characterising the community life are identified in the settlement shape that is organised in seven
ksour true fortress-districts laid on the territory according to water availability. The urban morphology is reflection of a
complex social structure that is modelled on solidarity and based on a shared administration of goods. In defence of a
system of relations and values focused on the fragile balance between inhabitants and resources, the ksar appears as a
densely populated agglomerate, able to welcome all declinations of the oasienne urban life, and sized according to the
direct relation between population and the production that is necessary to its maintenance .
The system preservation seems to be linked to the constant ability of a community to keep alive the correspondence
between self-sufficiency and solidarity that distinguishes the specific identity of an oasis. When there is lack of one of the
two aspects, the physical reality, which is built around a fragile balance that is recomposed at every season, loses its
meaning.
Figuig and Djenn are both towns built of raw earth. Being impossible to find combustible resources in order to transform
earth into a resistant and durable material - wood is used as a fuel to cook clay - the raw earth represents the only
means able to ensure a proper stability to the settlement. In this sense, the building made of raw earth is a founding
element to define the urban identity. The resulting morphology, which derives from a necessity, discusses the expressive
ability of techniques. Thus, it is by doing, that is by knowing how to use the building technique, that the architectonic rule
coexists with the urban one; a contextual definition of the urban space corresponds to the construction of the building.
In the Maghrebi oasis, the masons corporation passes on building single houses following precise architectonic codes,
which are established by an egalitarian philosophy that does not allow any distinctive feature within the urban fabric. In
Djenn, construction shows itself in the collective realization of the town, which is inspired by a principle of democratic
urbanism finding its foundation in the esoteric, magic knowledge handed on from the Baris cooperative (Marchand,
2009).
Both in the Maghrebi oasis and the area surrounding the inland delta of the Niger river, the urban lite, guardian of
know-how, holds and manages the logics of building and transforming a town and its urban facts. In this way, the
transformation expressed through the rituality of maintenance is an act able to renew each time the shared principles of
community life.
Indeed, earth, a plastic and workable material, needs a constant processing in order to resist extreme environmental
conditions. This is the case of a care that, erasing the time marks superficially and bringing the form back to a supposed
original state, represents the pretext by which the community acknowledges its own history. In view of the permanence
of some building techniques, which is representative of an urban image deprived of its time, it does exist the continuous
change of an architectonic form that is able to integrate the progressive settling of the communitys balance.
249

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 3. The view of Figuig from Djebel Grouz

2. Colonial postcards the style and the authentic

In 1893, the French colonel Louis Archinard, founding himself in front of Djenn, will use the following words to describe
it: cest la ville la plus riche et la plus commerante que jai vue au Soudan; cest celle qui, pour un Europen ressemble
le plus une ville, et elle differe absolument des autres grands centres noirs qui nous sont dej familierement connus:
Segou, Sansandingi
The sight offered to the colonels eyes is, in fact, that of a town deeply marked by the political and economic vicissitudes
that compromised its structure and role (Prussin, 1994; Bedaux et al., 2003). Archinard who is seduced by the western
imagery, which is created on the basis of the explorers and lieutenants diaries and accounts, gives back the image of a
private urban reality of its historical deepness. It seems that this is the first letter of a series of cartes postales that
portrays a seemingly paradoxical static image. The most part of colonial urban politics will be founded on this
simulacrum, and will focus on the preservation and valorisation of an image that is assumed as the mythical origin of the
town form. The invention of an alternative memory to the real stratification of historical events is based on the return of a
fictitious figure, a means of divulgation by an authentic nature (De Jong and Rowlands, 2007). On the basis of this
mystification overlapping the authentic to the real, it has been created a memory that recognises the style as a code of a
universally decipherable and transmissible communication. Therefore, the construction of the Great Mosque of Djenn
becomes the paradigmatic event of aspiration to the Sudanese style, probably without any real historical precedent,
consistently advertised in the various European Expositions straddling the century. As Labelle Prussin suggests, the
event of reconstruction of the third mosque of Djenn, between 1906 and 1907, seems to be linked to modes,
convention and procedure originating from Europe. The Great Mosque, which is built on the ruins of the first mosque as
a pretext for a supposed continuity with the origins of the Islamic cult, faces an empty space of considerable dimensions
in the middle of a populated centre (Prussin, 1968; Prussin, 1994; Bedaux et al., 2003). The urban fabric, which is
originally organised in thirteen districts according to the different ethnic and social structures, results to be definitely
subjected to and hierarchized by one great building able to resume the whole urban scene. Reflection of a synthetic
interpretation that shuns the deepness of changes occurred over the centuries, the facades architecture addresses the
town according to rules and principles proper of a certain late nineteenth-century faadisme. The vague symmetry of the
oriental elevation, marked by the three western towers, and the monumentality of the northern facade, clearly opposing
the plain southern entrance, seem to be remote transpositions of western features, which are alien to the local know250

MIC _ My Ideal City

how. It is by leaving out the organization of the inner space, divided into galleries by a series of ogival arches, that the
architecture of the third mosque can be considered a talking monument. This is well-visible from the large opposite
space (nearly a champ de mars around which most of the administrative and military centres of the French delegation
will have their own headquarters), and stands aloof from the rigorism that characterised the work of Sekou Amadou, who
inspired and commissioned the second mosque. Nevertheless, it is by the same rigour that a fracture is inflicted to the
urban habitat. The space where the Great Mosque stands is definitely compromised by the peculiarity of a centre that is
thought to serve the business, and is organised around small spaces that are managed by individual communities. Mopti
town, French outpost on the Niger river, which distances seventy kilometres, will inherit the commercial role that Djenn
will slowly lose in favour of an authentic, almost imaginary, stylistic hegemony - the irony of fate is that, through a kind of
weird role reversal, a mosque in a perfect Sudanese style will be built in Mopti. This mosque will be every inch the
younger sister of the just finished Great Mosque in Djenn.
The cit administrative, which was realized in Figuig in order to provide a proper settlement to the French legions, seems
to ignore the necessary characteristics that the oasis urban centre requires from both a morphological and a topological
point of view. The high population density, the territorial layout in relation to the sources mapping, and the egalitarian
construction of the urban space surrender in the face of a centralising attempt over the territory that, contextually,
corresponds to power concentration. Therefore, the decisive element becomes the infrastructure along which the cit
articulates herself. By linking the Mediterranean regions to the Algerian border, the 17th route nationale goes across the
ksour system, which loses its own defensive function and its own self-sufficiency, both prerequisites to guarantee its
survival.
Those who arrive at Figuig are welcomed by an iconography that overlaps suggestion on imagination. This reveals an
architectonic language that is, at the same time, eloquent and incomprehensible, made of arcades, enfilades of arches,
and public spaces. The cit is situated high on the djourf - the scarp marking the oasis topography from where she
shows in a contemplative attitude all her non-involvement in that territory, from which the oasis always defended through
a slow process of changing.

Figure 4. Djenn, view of a street

Figure 5. Djenn, the masons at work for the crepissage

251

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 6. Figuig, postcard with the ruins of an ancient ksar, 1910

Figure 7. Figuig, postcard with the cit administrative, 1910

252

MIC _ My Ideal City

3. Postcolonial perspectives heritage and modernity

Such perishable and fragile realities, deprived of their role and nature, lose the necessary means for their own survival.
The changes that were induced by the European vicissitudes loosened the identity ties binding the social structure to the
physical reality. They, then, corroded that system of human relationships and territorial relations that had represented a
necessary basic ecology for centuries. Today, a relentless impairment corresponds to the break-up of these
relationships. Due to the lack of a cultural support and of the resulting technical tools, which are necessary to the
development of a structure that is now precarious, the raw earth with its architectonical and urban rules loses the
essential value that is decisive in the city construction. The traditional houses have been neglected and deprived of the
necessary upkeep following up on the considerable migratory phenomenon that was produced by the break-up of
internal balance.
Since 1988, the whole town of Djenn has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Also Figuig hopes to be part
of this list while supported by several European organisations. It is necessary that the legacy inherited by the West at the
beginning of the twentieth century, having been so hardly created thanks to travels accounts and iconographic
testimonies, does not change and sticks as much as possible to the original form. Today, the constant protection of the
inherited image becomes the means through which the West periodically renews the original discovery. Up against the
necessity of protecting a traditional centre a western legacy subject to preservation and valorisation it is left a
glimmer of that inclination to change and balance that has always been typical of a town risen on the edge of the desert.
The neglect of a traditional centre represents a natural reaction to the distortion imposed by the European thought. This
reaction materializes in new spaces and relations able to reinterpret the alternation of new original and different
conditions.
In Figuig, new spaces and new relations with the territory set against the fabric that is dug by the ruins. Almost half the
emigrated population, once back home, tries to express its new state through the re-significance of those marginal and
peripheral areas among the ksour, a favoured territory for the new forms of living. The spaces opened among the ksour
become, then, occasion for new forms of appropriation. They are articulated areas where the most recent extensions of
the built-up area crowd close to the urban entrances, and spaces where the concentration of activities and the density of
participation to the urban life become more intense. These sites are often aggregated around crossroads and take form
of true urban carrefours, which are anti-polar compared with the centrality of the consolidated urban centre. It is in the
distance between the relation with the territory that is defined by characters of necessity characters that have always
produced the settlement morphology - and the relations focused on the representation of a new individual state that the
modernity of a settlement comes off voicing different values.
The construction of a communitarian space is overlapped by an auto representative space, which is founded on a public
aesthetic criterion through which anyone is able to understand the individuality of the expressed values. The plasticity
and the workability of raw earth are set against the seeming, perhaps, illusory stability that is ensured by a reinforced
concrete building. The rough surface of the banco is set against the regularity of the baked clay tiles. The facing of the
djennenk facades, despite the fact of representing a considerable threat to the static stability of buildings, is a public
display of an aspiration to modernity that becomes a symbol when the peculiar elements of traditional buildings, once
crystallised and deprived of their original function, persist. Pillars (sarafar) and stakes (toron), by losing any reason for
253

MIC _ My Ideal City

their use, remain as a symbolic testimony of affiliation to community, which is now mediated by the personal experience.
The Djenn road, though unaltered in its form, becomes the space for new icons that prove the renewal of needs and
requirements, which reflect the change of domestic life and that of social aggregation spaces. The natural endogenous
turning of the urban image into representative figures of new communication codes (often imported from European,
North-African and Sub-Saharan metropolitan realities), is overlapped by the resistance that is connected to the defence
of a conventional and transmissible image of the town built of raw earth. The town reifies itself in one big monument that
is entirely exposed to the global market logic, and is not interested in the territorial relations that have ensured
throughout the time the settlement functioning and nature. It is, perhaps, not interested in that inclination to survival that
has always distinguished the towns on the edge of the Sahara desert.

Figure 8. Djenn, souvenirs and carpets

Figure 9. Djenn, the plaque UNESCO in front of the Great Mosque

References
VERNE J., Cinq semaines en ballon, Hetzel, Paris, 1862.
PRUSSIN L., The architecture of Islam in West Africa, in African Arts n. 1, 2, 1968.
DEVISSE J., Urban History and Tradition in the Sahel, in ARKOUN M. (ed.), Reading the contemporary African City,
Dakar-Singapore, 1982.
GUIBBERT J.J., The Ecology and Ideology of Cities on the Edge of the Desert, in ARKOUN M. (ed.), Reading the
contemporary African City, Dakar-Singapore, 1982.
CAILLIE R., Journal dun voyage Tembouctou et Jenn, dans lAfrique centrale, La Decouverte, Paris, 1985.
MICARA L., Architettura e spazi dellIslam. Le istituzioni collettive e la vita urbana, Carucci, Rome, 1985.
BOURGEOIS J. L., The history of great mosque of Djenn, in African Arts n. 20, 3, 1987.
MAAS P., MOMMERSTEEG G., Une architecture fascinante, in BEDAUX R., VAN DER WAALS J.D. (eds.), Djenn, une
ville millenaire au Mali, Leiden-Gand, 1994 ; 79-94.
PRUSSIN L., Verit et imaginaire de larchitecture, in BEDAUX R., VAN DER WAALS J.D. (eds.), Djenn, une ville
millenaire au Mali, Leiden-Gand, 1994 ; 102-111.
BEDAUX R., DIABY B., MAAS P., Larchitecture de Djenn. La perennit dun Patrimoine Mondial, Editions Snoeck,
Gand, 2003.
MORRIS J., PRESTON BLIER S., Butabu. Architetture in terra dellAfrica Occidentale, Electa, Milan, 2004.
DE JONG F., ROWLANDS M., Reclaiming Heritage. Alternative imaginaries of memory in West Africa, Left Coast Press,
Walnut Creek, 2007.
MARCHAND T., The Masons of Djenn, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2009.
It is the richest and the most business town that I have ever seen in Sudan ; it is the town that, according to Europeans, looks most like a city, and
really distinguishes from other big black centres that are already well-known: Segou, Sansanding. See Prussin, 1994.

254

MIC _ My Ideal City

Waterfront landscapes of the 21st century.

Architectures for travellers along the Water-City threshold
Olivia Longo

In the last decades, the cities have gone through huge sea changes that affected the way of living a territory. The
fundamental communication codes have changed within the relationship system and the concept of limit has more and
more lost its significance, and so the relations between public and private spaces have been modified, the cyberspace
replaced the traditional meeting places, radically modifying the socializing mechanisms.
The 21st Century complex and stratified city takes the form of open but often undefined configurations, constantly
changes itself moulding new shapes, structures and customs to meet the emerging social and cultural phenomena of our
times. The cotemporary city can be described like a big patchwork made of relationship systems, ways of use and the
coexistence of past and present worlds that cohabit in new ways. The evolution of the urban fabric of this city, more and
more often takes place through replacements over, integrations and connections among parts of very diverse
characters.
Nowadays the city lives on transactions and exchanges of ephemeral and symbolic values, rather than of the production
of assets. Its most precious value is in the image and appeal is able to create. The city telling comes before the real city
and often influences the way the masses of travellers encounter a city and its portrait, made up of a complex
heterogeneous composition of physical and virtual elements.
The new ways of living the city have created an extremely complex system of coming and going of people, crossing
everyday the big metropolis, constantly moving for work, study and enjoyment reasons. These dynamics have entailed
an increment of the means of transport and of the tourism that, though once was linked and limited to the classic
summer vacation, has now been developed to include a variety of situations where the motivations work-studyenjoyment interwine and contaminate themselves to become coexisting reasons within the same journey.
The problems linked to the earth's health have also influenced the way of conceiving tourism, that has been organized
and ruled by new concepts described in the European Charter of Sustainable Tourism; it contains the guidelines and
principles that govern the fruition and organization of sites in respect for the environment and for the cultural resources
of places. Within the definition of eco-tourism or Responsible Tourism, some key-elements have been highlighted:
respect for the ecosystem and biodiversity, reduction of the environmental impact of structures and activities linked to
tourism, preservation of the traditional culture of the local community, active hands-on of the local community in the
running of eco-touristic enterprises.

255

MIC _ My Ideal City

The concept of Responsible Tourism was born at the end of the eighties, and it has often been used in literature and by
the media assigning it many variations: Solidal Tourism to show solidarity activities towards the Third World, Conscious
Tourism to refer to a correct use of the available resources, Sustainable Tourism associate with the economic concept of
sustainable development, able to influence and determine dynamics of the tourism market, Territorial Tourism that
devoted to the direct acquaintance of the inhabitants and to the features of the identity of a place. In any case, it does
not exist a precise definition acknowledged worldwide.
In 2005, the Italian Association for the Responsible Tourism has given the following definition: "the responsible tourism is
the tourism carried out according to the principle of social and economic justice and in full respect of the environment
and the culture".
On the basis of the ethical codes of sustainability, the touristic business must not impoverish the destination of the
journey, can become instead a pole of a driving force for an economical and social development in the single
destinations.
In Italy the tourism along the coasts has a long tradition documented by vintage postcards, travel guides and moreover
by the presence of marine architectures, either temporary or not, spread along its coasts. During the summer, Italian and
foreign tourists literally make a rush at the touristic waterfronts; to get a more precise idea of the length of the Italian
waterfronts, we should focus on these figures: the waterfront of the Mediterranean Sea is 46.000 kms long, half of which
(20.000 kms, Unep 2006 report) is taken up by buildings, among the 23 countries overlooking it, Italy holds a real record
with its 196 towns spread along around 8.000 kms of coasts, being more than one third of all the urbanized territories in
the Mediterranean.
The shore line in Italy is a precious resource, where the environment vulnerability and the energetic susteinability of the
urban development become exemplary and paradigmatic. The shape of peninsula is a great value as far as concerns the
tourism along the waterfronts, nevertheless the property speculation in the 60s and 70s and the arbitrary administration
of the public administration have caused an indiscriminate overbuilding of the Italian coastal areas.
In Italy the tourism is like a two-edged-sword, because from one hand attracts a lot of people from all over the world, by
virtue of the artistic environmental and architectural values that still characterize a good percentage of the territory,
however, on the other end, the tourist flow is huge only in the six warmest months of the year, entailing an on-off
management that would require to be balanced through alternative activities that may be practiced also during the
coldest months.
The waterfront systems could tell the evolution of cities and territories, favoring the understanding of the more recent
transformations and stimulate the making up of future scenarios. These places are in continuous evolution, where
resources and potentialities to succeed can create new imagination and new landscapes within renewed market
dynamics, brought about by new social needs in respect of the pre-existences and of the local identity.
A long series of circumstances stratified in the course of time have determined the complexity and the problematic
nature of the Italian waterfronts, that still keep, however, in as much obvious manner, their treasures in terms of
resources and chances to succeed; they are places in connection with the historic city, scenographyc parts of high
visibility for the all city, spaces for interaction between two different systems, earth and water, areas of great economic
development and heavy traffic of people and goods, once deteriorated and inaccessible and now a subject of growing

256

MIC _ My Ideal City

interest from both the community and the community of experts and the local administrations, becoming a main topic for
the urban regeneration politics of the urban fabrics.
The waterfront cities should be conceived as a patchwork of different fabrics, considering the possibility of using water as
a traditional urban fabric, planning a specific functions system on it, such as transports, leisure, cultural educational
activities, etc.. so as they may benefit from the aesthetic qualities and the surplus value this element may provide. The
revitalizing of these urban areas needs plans based on standars of flexibility and versatility, as it requires the presence of
many players and rather slow times of assimilation, involving different subjects. The extension and the complexity of the
territory require, furthermore, continuous redevelopment process that call for open and flexible projects, able to conform
over the time to the sudden change of the markets and of the needs of a globalized society; so, it is about projects that
do not include permanent spatial and functional solutions.

Five diagrams
Along the coasts of Italy we can detect some types of combination of situations that recur frequently. Through the
observation of some cities, but also portions of coastal territory, it is possible to trace at least five types of water-town
(Fig. 1) relationship: from the purest, in which the two elements are in close contact, to the most contaminated in which
two parties present a solution of continuity very critical and difficult to resolve.

1_

2_SOFT EDGE
WATER

BUILDINGS
3_HARD EDGE < 2 meters above sea level

4_HARD EDGE > 10 meters above sea level

5_INFRASTRUCTURE

The premise of this abstract reasoning is the will to summarize the issues presented in the areas of the waterfront in a
few simple elements, in order to guide the redevelopment of their parties without losing sight of some major objectives:
- to connect the city with water
- to return to the people all the parts of the waterfront
- to make the waterfront attractive throughout the year.
257

MIC _ My Ideal City

Within a waterfront may occur more types of water-city relationship because, obviously, the terrain will determine every
situation and the analysis of soil can regular the type of specific intervention.
The descriptions of the five diagrams have the intent to identify the main issues of each situation and their design
approaches.

Figure 1. Diagrams of the five situations of Italian coastal waterfront

258

MIC _ My Ideal City

1. Water - Buildings
In the case where there is a direct relationship with water, the problems are mainly technical because of the buildings are
too close to the water that must be controlled and regulated by the massive intervention to protect the buildings. Building
water features often contain outdated because they are linked to specific social and economic systems of a certain age
that have little shared with the current dynamics. These buildings may be drained and converted to public functions to
attract more people throughout the year: museums, theaters, cinemas, workshops, schools, multi-purpose areas, etc..
The redevelopment for public use often suffer from the comparison with the safety regulations of the buildings both as a
matter of stability of the structure who for reasons of fire prevention. It is therefore necessary to adapt existing and
develop new routes outside, preferably removable, to enhance the access of large numbers of travelers

2. Water - Soft Edge - Buildings

When there is a beach between the water and the buildings, you have to take account of the attack between the urban
texture and the beach, retraining the boundary between the driveway and sand. There is often a huge shortage of
parking spaces or a heavy vehicular traffic that must be addressed by finding effective alternatives: decentralizing any
neighboring port activities, conveying the heavy traffic on roads outside, creating new roads and underground parking,
and building the thickening nip-beach road so as to find new spaces for public services that are not only linked to the
activities beach but fail to attract visitors during the winter months. If the front of the city is very far from the beach, you
can build a new front with a section that allows shots of the seascape from the windows of old buildings, redeveloping
the image-face view of the city from the sea.

3. Water - Hard Edge < 2 meters above sea level - Buildings

This is the most common situation in a waterfront because it concerns the docks or the seaside promenades often built
from the foundation of the city. They are borders built in stone where there are functions still current but which do not
often include public ones, such as cultural activities and entertainment. In these cases the difficulty is how to bring
together these new features with existing ones mainly service to the marina or commercial. The existing seafront
promenades have been often invaded by enlargement of the port or by the extension of roads during the last century. In
other cases, the saddest, were destroyed by earthquakes and tsunamis and rebuilt by not respecting the ancient
vocation. The port functions, especially tourist facilities, offer many opportunities of attraction but you have to manage
the proximity of the two ports that require an extensive reorganization of the design features to make public most areas
of the commercial port.

4. Water - Hard Edge > 10 meters above sea level - Buildings

This situation is rare in the theme of the waterfront. This is a very special orographic relief because it consists of a high
cliff. Sometimes the pad has a highland village which has no physical relationship with the sea. In these cases the most
direct solution is the installation of panoramic lifts, racks and cable cars. The design problems are mainly technical and
environmental impact. The result can add great potential attractions for travelers, enable tourism development that did
not exist before or were confined to only a few users. The difficulty of protecting the sites from the invasion of mass
259

MIC _ My Ideal City

tourism is another very delicate issue that can be addressed by creating tourist functions related to extreme sports like
free climbing, bungy jumping, leisure flying with Ala Rogallo, etc.. In this way it is possible to attract tourists from around
the world willing to use the facilities all year round and even at high cost.

5. Water - Infrastructure - Buildings

This is the situation more difficult to solve. When an infrastructure makes a break in continuity and is used by many
users, and is connected to the system of the neighboring ports or airport, a redevelopment of the waterfront requires
large economic efforts. In this case you have to deal with the infrastructure system and understand how it stays in the
waterfront, working on the image of the urban front. If there is a public road or rail line they can be shifted under the city
or on the water. If it's a viaduct or aqueduct, etc. you can think of using it as a framework on which to hang the new
features, addressing the urban front like a multimedia computer display of big size, visible at great distances. If there is a
railway sea station or an airport you have to reconstruct a new front on the water equipped with all the features and
connections necessary to eliminate the gap between parts of the city that would encompass the megastructure. Both
stations and airports are already shopping, then just add cultural and recreational activities to turn these non-places in
parts of the actual city.

Conclusions
The paper contains a summary of the progress of research conducted on the waterfront of the Italian coast. This study
has resulted in winning a top prize at the international competition of ideas for the redevelopment of the Waterfront San
Leone in Sicily. The research is still underway and is expanding its scope to the study of waterfront lagoon, river and
lake of the Italian territory.

260

MIC _ My Ideal City

Bari Urban Visions

Anna Christiana Maioranoa, Politecnico di Bari
Cesare Verdosciaa, Politecnico di Bari

1. The conscious vision and representation

The graphical representation is in its true essence a tool to explore both what you see, and what you do not see making
it visible, capable of realize a simulacrum of an object that represents both the reality and his fiction.
This type of representation embodies a code of intellectual understanding of the world and, for what interests us, tends
to consolidate the urban and architectural image, shows the membership of a building and urban category, confirms its
origin and correlates it with the cultural matrix.
However, not everything can be usefully represented by means of a so-called traditional figurative system of the
drawing, and the sketch, for which represent mean compose analog and symbolic forms identified by lines and colors.
Visual communication has assumed a wider dimension, also determined by the rapid technological development
achieved by the production of images. In front of at same problems do not always the experiences conventional capture
all the expressive possibilities. The result may be more immediate if, for example, a building is represented by an
electronic simulation of exploration of a digital model, rather than from a drawing survey.
Indeed, the contemporary visuality, which is pervasive of the physiological and cultural experience, to the detriment of
any other sense, exercised an pressure colonizing of the consciences - although with the stated purpose create a
general consensus on consumption - this by replace almost completely the view of the real world and often replacing it,
and feeding on the visual materials more and more realistic" to reproduce it.
The process of graphic communication comes from the observation of natural and artificial phenomena for relations with
the theories that justify them. You are in a position to visually outline an object and describe its structure, that is the
particular state of relations with which certain phenomena occur in it. On one hand, cognitive processes, at the origins of
which there is the perception, the other side the processes that we can call ideation.
But as are formed the ideas, meant as elements of mental discourse or as a specific mental discourse? All one has in
mind, comes from data collected by the senses that give specific content to the different mental operations. The
relationship between the feelings and the ideas is probably regulated, as hypothesized since the eighteenth century, of
the theories of associationism who imagined the complex states of mind governed by principles and rules of association.
The join or not join of the single sensory data, their relative permanence and their combination, was supposed to be

Assignments: Anna Christiana Maiorano: par. 2, 3, 4; Cesare Verdoscia: par. 1.

261

MIC _ My Ideal City

subject to mechanisms that in time were hypothesized and that still today the neurosciences have not been able to
explain them completely.
The continuous discussion on the topic, have produced interest formulations on the way of the identification of some
hypothetical principles followed by the associative process. Concepts such as those of: Succession, Sequence, Series,
Similarity, Opposition, Coincidence, Simultaneously, etc., up to the more vigorous position of the associationism
supported by James Mill who said: "Our ideas are born in the order it has followed the sensations of which they are
copies. This is the association of ideas, an expression which, remember, is not intended to indicate other anything than
of the order in which they occur"1. Always Mill, explained our perception of physical objects as the result of associations
"synchronous", namely the shape, size, weight, color, etc.., that form our perception and therefore, our idea of an object.
This would seem to also apply for the chance to learn and understand the language and graphic language that depend
on a sequence of associations between objects, words and signs, in accordance with rules that describe the sequence in
which usually occur.
Mill's son, Stuart, have developed and completed the formulation father, arriving find the mental mechanism that allows
us through the memory of past sensations to construct a priori the idea of possible sensory states and to anticipate
them. In front of short and transient sensations we are able to conceive of physical objects as permanent entities, we
expect to have those feelings in a durable manner. Expectations or anticipations, allow us fill in the gaps of sensory flow
and together form our personal knowledge of the perceptible world.
At the thought of the schools of 'associationism', was added in the last century, the contribution of the supporters of the
psychology of Gelstalt, who completed it, honed it, and above all opened the world of visual perception and of the
imagination.
The field is known, the psychology of Gelstalt, of the shape, or better of the organized form, argued, inter alia, that
observing a phenomenon, from the beginning, we perceive the whole rather than its parts, that is considering the
phenomenon in its entirety not as a sum of components. This takes evidence in the visual perception and in the socalled optical illusions, and above all in the famous experimental drawings, that observed in two different views show
different forms of interpretation never perceived simultaneously2.
But, the concept of Gestalt perception as sequence of actions next time leads us to face - although in a form perhaps too
brief - the theme of communication and improvement of ideas and of course of the conscience as well as faced by
cognitive neuroscience.
It is a complex concept and therefore difficult to insert into a single definition3.
To simplify, we can groped to think at the conscience, premising a fitting metaphor, as well as explains the Boncinelli4.
He considers the operating procedures of first-generation computer, which defines the serial, which is regulated by the
execution of an operation behind the other, i.e. sequentially, and the contrasts it to that introduced in the latest

in: E. Boncinelli, Come nascono le idee, Bari, Laterza, 2010, p. 67.

For groped to understand how the perception of reality (or the representation of the already received and then release) is structured in units, some
laws were identified (mental or cognitive mechanisms) defined "training units phenomenal", which in their view, overseeing the formation,
amendment and development of ideas, not unlike those identified dall'Associazionismo, albeit with different ways, refining, and completing them.
3Boncinelli identifies three types of conscience: the awareness, explicit and shared self- conscience and phenomenal conscience. See E.
Boncinelli, op. cit.
4See E. Boncinelli, op. cit.
1
2

262

MIC _ My Ideal City

generation of computers called parallel, multitasking5, and which compares with our nervous system, that is organized to
operate in parallel because at the same time it leads to the cerebral cortex dozens nerve signals coming from the
senses, the so-called neurostati, while our conscience, like computers less advanced, select them in sequence. In
other words, conscience can be considered a process of serialization of mental and nervous events perceived at the
same time.
The emergence into conscience of a mental or sensory event is due to the temporary alignment of a number of parallel
nerve processes, in a serial sequence in temporal succession, becoming "psicostati.
The forced serialization of parallel neural events is a process that shapes our perception of the surrounding world, our
actions and the our storage. An act of conscience can start because we are affected by a specific event, and evolves in
a process fact according to confirmations and confutation of the expectations of what is to happen on the basis of what
we know based on our personal experiences6.
An episode of conscience, may contain mixed in different proportions, a nervous event (perception) and a mental event
(planning-conceptual). This alloy the conscience to the language in which is realized - i.e. at the human ability to
combine observation and imagination.
If the external stimuli are acceptably conform to our expectations and to our ability to interpret it, the act of conscience
continues (so we can get an idea of the observed phenomenon), or the episode ends7.
From this point of view, the process of conscious observation, but also that the conception and elaboration of thought,
driven by the need to isolate the separate components of a phenomenon, and then serialize, show it at the conscience in
time sequence, using each technique, each type of representation that so permits. Often the understanding, the birth of
an idea and its representation are whole, and in this sense several, have been the awards of the prominent role, for the
construction of knowledge, of the representation techniques.
Physically at this stage, we express ourselves taking by a vast repertoire that includes the sketch, the graphic note,
annotation, the mark on a representation exists. We use a graphical language very personal because the images are
used to discover, invent, simplify, in an act that is substantially self-communication.
But the idea, came to light, produced by the conscience, consisting of neurostati serialized, can be communicated to
others, and to ensure the effectiveness of communication we must strive to build our messages, based on the mental
mechanisms of understanding of the phenomena, that appear to the conscience, well that use of the repertory of signs
that have available our stakeholders.
The logic of drawing and science of the representation uses, reproducing the lines and angles, analog instruments that
allow us to address and solve problems. So did the Euclidean geometry, so do the projective geometry, using a model
that reproduce the mechanics of vision eye, to draw shapes similar to those perceived or conceived, helping us to
understand as well as to see.

In fact, this mode allows the processor to run two processes do not simultaneously, but in quick succession and alternating current.
We recall the concept of "anticipation" of the Mill, and the role it has in the perception of reality.
7 It is inevitable that when consciousness is present to a certain state of affairs that take an emotional coloring, that compare with the emotional
reality. The emotional involvement is very strong, our every action is accompanied by more or less intense emotionalism, which refers not only to
the vicissitudes of real life but also to imagine and promised to mind, and is the essence of our individual conscience . The emotional life but never
abandons us, to emerge, events must take advantage of the serialization of elements most closely associated with it. Cfr. J. Ledoux, Il cervello
emotivo. Alle origini delle emozioni, Milano, Baldini Castoldi Dalai editore s.p.a., 2008.
5
6

263

MIC _ My Ideal City

Represent is to simplify. Among the wealth of the components of a real phenomenon, we operate a selection, according
to a criterion or point of view, to put them in sequence, make choices, and then identifying the categories of
representations, for example according to the degree of interpretation, i.e. the level of iconicity, but also the graphic
technique or attributive, of the degree of use of conventional standard signs, as well as the Moles8 classification of in
the early sixties of the twentieth century.
Or, as more recently did the Purini9, pervaded by a pessimistic view about the quality and quantity of visual material
produced in the contemporary world, calibrate the communication on the importance and duration of the object of
representation, distinguishing the categories (spheres), consisting of messages "mobile, hybrid and ephemeral," as
those conveyed by the advertising, the television and the cinema; then those visual materials provided by art and
science, present mainly in the documentary equipment accompanying the book; and finally those with more accentuated
durability that relate to the images of the physical world, landscape, cities, buildings.
Comes to mind the myth of Plato's cave, and that group of people forced from birth to visually explore the world only
through the shadows of statues of men, animals and things projected by a fire lit behind them and brought there by men
silent, and then imagined free to reach gradually the light and observe and contemplate directly the forms of nature.
Those men whose reality figurative had been the vibrant shade of an object on the cave wall, which is a schematic
representation willed by others, will can recognize the shapes of the world, becouse prepared of the knowledge, or from
the conscience of their representation.
" They are the images that invite at the reflection prepare to know the truth10.

2. Old city and new scenarios: a denied horizon

The city of Bari, often on the borderline between an important steps forward and sudden setbacks, between brave
predictions and escapes in the tradition, offers diverse urban settings in which the opening to the Adriatic Sea is not
always a guarantee of innovation. Some areas of the city appear to have any future. Unchanged and mute for a long
time, these areas are not open to renewal, except for an act of imagination, visionary and creative act entrusted to
capacity of the designer that foreshadows an event, that measure it, applies a method, building rules, select the visual
noise, listen to the voices of those souls that space and develop the project.The task of translating the data of reality in
graphic design, of developing ideas and turn them into images, has been entrusted to digital design.
Bari Urban Visions intended to be a meeting place of ideas, expectations, which is reflected on the identity of the places
where the city is tested to verify its ability to host between its historical traces and its consolidated physical weight, new
forms, new languages, new architectures, and develop a possible model for urban growth. The search for the identity of
places and the desire for change, find their expression in the draft of Bari Urban Visions, built with faith and patience by
the students of the Design Courses, inspired by a visionary and a creative ability that has opened a new horizon for
architectural research and for debate over the city.

A. Moles, Informationstheorie und Gelstaltung, Ulm, Seminar, 1965.

F. Purini, Sospendere il disegno, in Atti XXVI Convegno Internazionale delle Discipline della Rappresentazione, s.l., 2005, pp. 68-71.
10 G. De Fiore, Il disegno infinito, s.l., in Atti X Convegno Internazionale delle Discipline della Rappresentazione nelle Facolt di Architettura e di
Ingegneria, 1988.
8
9

264

MIC _ My Ideal City

3. Bari Urban Visions: the research project

The project starts from real situations, from real places, and from unresolved and complex spaces of the city of Bari. The
project aims at the rehabilitation and the enhancement of the site that it was chosen to exercise the own expressive and
creative abilities and to experiment new languages and new forms of representation and communication of ideas. The
project is expounded through the search of a new image, in all directions, that is obtained elaborating visual and graphic
material and crossing the threshold between real and virtual. The project goes through the teaching experience11 at the
School of Engineering of the Politecnico of Bari, that deals the relationship between information technology, architecture
and digital environments, where the digital design is the "place of learning a new system of cognitive and creative
values"12 and it is the main tool to read and tell something. The digital design has the task of making visible and
understandable the creative process of interpretation and manipulation of space. The project is developed through three
matrices: visual, constructive and interactive; each of them represents a precise stage of the creative process.

3.1 The images search: the visual matrix

Figure 1. Visual Matrix and the reference models - Thematic graphics tablet in Computer Aided Design course at Politecnico of Bari
(students: Giuseppe Ruospo, Gennaro Sinisi)

11Course
12Franco

of Computer Aided Design - Architectural Design 2 in School of Civil Engineering of Politecnico di Bari.
Purini, Comporre larchitettura (p.107), Edizioni Laterza, Bari 2008.

265

MIC _ My Ideal City

In the first matrix (visual matrix), we explore the infinite visual backdrop of images from the web that tell of the city not yet
built and buildings not yet constructed through digital models and virtual reality spaces. An image search on specific
topics, to create an archive of visions, and situations drawn from the virtual world and to draw inspiration in the design
phase. The digital images which constitute a virtual reality helps to broaden the concept of representation, especially in
the production of iconic images and hypertext in the communication of architectural thought.
On the web, where we wrapped up and screened in parallel realities, so we could feel exposed to emotions such as joy,
surprise, fear etc.., the images are selected and analyzed according to the object that is represented, the visual
language used, the representation technique, the adherence to the identified challenges and goals.

3.2 The story of the place and the image of the city

Figure 2. Visual Matrix and the images of Bari old town - Thematic graphics tablet in Computer Aided Design course at Politecnico of Bari
(students: Giuseppe Ruospo, Gennaro Sinisi)

The passage from the virtual to the real world is through the identification of the work area in the urban contests of the
city of Bari. The choice of the work-area is focused on those areas that have a compromised or hidden identity, unstable
systems, transit areas, etc..
The research on the identity is not a secondary objective of the project and it follows every stage of the knowledge of this
place and leads the graphic definition of the work-area.

266

MIC _ My Ideal City

A tale told with pictures that starts from the observation and the description of the place. The tale of the city, in its actual
state, is entrusted to the digital tools of visual communication and spatial representation, such as photography and digital
graphics, video and three-dimensional modeling.
To investigate the relationship between architecture and contemporary visual languages is the specific objective of the
research: the architecture becomes the protagonist of the process aimed at upgrading knowledge and enhancing of the
rich and complex architectural and urban heritage, through the construction of images, to implement the existing
documentation, to provide new data elements to communicate and to suggest new design strategies.
The results of the visual matrix of the project is the targeting of the visual noise and the negative aspects relating to the
work-area that has been chosen.

3.3 The project between real and virtual: constructive matrix

Figure 3. Constructive Matrix: Bari old town models - Thematic graphics tablet in Computer Aided Design course at Politecnico of Bari
(students: Giuseppe Ruospo, Gennaro Sinisi)

The second level of Bari Urban Visions is defined by the construction and texturing process of the 3D-model: this is the
phase where you create a completely new images of the city, reconstructing this space with architecture, surfaces, new
objects, etc. and developing a project using the stored images and letting the characters and the language of the virtual
world, through montage and solid modeling operations. The functions and the contents of this new architecture respect

267

MIC _ My Ideal City

the characteristics of the real city and, in the form of digital images, they are entered into the existing space modifying
and creating complex images with multiple expression values where it is difficult to find traditional references.
And it is here that the representation is the thought, idea. In this radical form of graphic design the project idea is
contaminated by the mass media, in which digital images hide something real and show a new events, in a continuous
motion that mimics the action and virtually simulates the perception. The imagination is guided by the ideas that need to
be clear, the result of a careful look, scientific and conscious look, and the it is the result of research and study. The
Projects of Bari Urban Visions do not tell the city through plants, elevations and sections; in most cases you can not
recognize the metric scale used but they repaired breaks, interrupt serial events, reconstruct missing parts, replace items
with others, fill empty spaces, clear the full spaces, insert new objects, give shape, color and light where there is
anything, and suggest activities. Some of these operations are such extremes, but all turned to suggesting possible
strategies of composition and design and encourage debates. In Bari Urban Visions we work on surfaces, spaces, forms
that allude only to the content and whose vision is postponed to a possible future implementation of this project.

3.4 A (urban) story to tell: multimedia and interactive matrix

Figure 4. Constructive Matrix: the contraction of the new image of the city through the photo-montage of the reference models - Thematic graphics
tablet in Computer Aided Design course at Politecnico of Bari (students: Giuseppe Ruospo, Gennaro Sinisi)

Each project in Bari Urban Visions ends in the third and (for now) final stage, in which the designer, following the
considerations relating to the specifics of the project and compared to the ideas to communicate, takes on the role of

268

MIC _ My Ideal City

director of the complex system of data that result by the previous phases. The choice of mass media submit the project
to the check and delivery it into the hands of citizens.
The new visions of the city of Bari Urban Visions are told through the development of communication projects where the
video is a tool that have a great potential of expression since it allows the vision of an architecture in its context and its
possibilities of use. It includes, summarizes and updates the traditional methods of description of the architecture in a
better form suitable to the media, immediate and understandable. The animation video tells a story to be discovered and
defined yet, perhaps, among the many possible, to suggest other plots by visual impulse. The architectural space
described by the moving image introduces the definition of a figurative code used by the project, in addition to other
codes (such as photography, drawing, writing) that govern the reporting of objects of study and contribute to build an
overall image to which you assign the value of a paradigmatic model of reality. Measured with this instrument and with
figurative language such as film, applied to the theme of the city and the representation of architecture, to communicate,
among other things, values and identity, suggests a number of issues and openness to new themes. As the instigator of
ideas, the video aims to reach all recipients of the project, offering an immediate approach to the content, to the
message and to the fulfillment of the project. It makes the architecture more understandable not only because it is
virtually reproduced in a figurative sense, but also because the video tell this story through the visual communication that
submitted the projects to the attention of people in visual form. In this way, the video becomes a tool that produces
visions, solicits comments and encourages the emotional involvement. The research, in this sense, attempts to address
the need for improved communication between technicians and between them and the future users of the project:
consider, for example, the participatory planning and the difficulties that the personalities involved in this process meet
during the debates, round tables and discuss the issues. It is very important to facilitate the transfer of information from
one category to another so that the process is not likely to be assessed in all its aspects.
The communication of the project, in addition to the videos, is through the establishment of thematic drawings. On the
same support (computer, as well as a paper) live heterogeneous elements together. The 3D-model of the work is
integrated with other tools for communication the project ideas: the images produced through the operations of
photomontage and rendering, design drawings, preparatory sketches and other graphic element that has contributed to
the genesis of the ideas represented.

4. Towards a sharing model of ideas

Today Bari Urban Vision is a box ideas still only addressed to the academic world; it is necessary make the project more
visible through the definition of a model to make it shareable, available online, to stimulate the debate on the
development of the city. This project must broaden the horizons towards Apulia, starting a dialogue between the different
actors of the transformation process, through a network of topic projects.

269

MIC _ My Ideal City

References
ANCESCHI G., Loggetto della raffigurazione, Milano, Etaslibri, 1992.
MUNARI B., Design e comunicazione visiva, Roma - Bari, Gius. Laterza&Figli Spa, 2009.
PURINI F., Una lezione sul disegno, Roma, Gangemi Editore, 2007.
PURINI F., Comporre larchitettura, Bari, Edizioni Laterza, 2008.
COCCHIARELLA L., La forma oltre il codice, Milano, Academia Universa Press, 2009.
MALDONADO T., Reale e Virtuale, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2007.
ZEVI B., Saper vedere larchitettura, Torino, Einaudi, 2008.

270

MIC _ My Ideal City

Green neighborhoods. Cities' breath

Claudio Novembre, University of Catania

1. From narrow spaces to wide ones. The environmentalization of the urban local policies
XXIst century global cities face a big challenge: turning from cities with narrow spaces to cities with wide ones. Our cities
are often characterized by narrow,crowded spaces, , with a huge number of cars that take the space away from the
pedestrians, and with streets surrounded by huge buildings and palaces. All this leaves really little space to breath.
This is why, in my opinion, reasoning about the ideal city of the XXIst century means considering ways to allow cities to
breath, and therefore, ways of building pieces of the landscape, the society, the economy that are compatible with the
idea of an airy city: a pedestrian city, respectful to the environment, that gives birth to new landscapes, acting as the
economic laboratory of new local economies deeply connected with the themes of ecology and innovation, aiming at
discovering the world and its cultures. Saskia Sassen has defined this city as endowed by a cosmopolitan citizenship,
capable of internationalizing peoples and cultures. As mentionrd in The uses of disorder. Personal identity and city life
by Richard Sennett, the city overcomes the wish to shun the city and find shelter in isolated places of the suburban
periphery.
A city with open spaces does not mean a greater and greater one, boundless, that is an exploded city (Portes, 2005). On
the contrary, it is a city which focuses on the theme of new urban dimensions, tipically smaller and more definite,
promoting communities, villages and neighborhoods inside the city that regain quality as the central aspect of both life
and living.
In this regard, in a recent interview,1 Renzo Piano affirms states that the urban belt has to be reduced instead of being
expanded and, inside it, spaces of common sociality must be built at the level of neighborhood, and the inhabitants must
move by means of public transport which are part of a well-functioning infrastructural network. Piano states that the city
of quality will be, in the near future, the city that will prove capable of renouncing (almost completely) to the massive use
of cars. A city which pursues these ambitions must be introduced to the change piece by piece, neighborhood by
neighborhood. This is important to ensure approval and participation of all communities to the process of change and to
show the urban transformation as a keen moment of the local community, which is committed to improve its own quality
of life. A city which reinforces the centrality of neighborhoods and their roles within the hierarchy of the urban
governance. A city composed by many city halls, from an institutional point of view, and by a great number of interlinked
centers from a geographical point of view. A city which experiences ways of active participation aimed at adopting micro-

1 La Repubblica newspaper; 12th April 2011 (pp. 41-43).

271

MIC _ My Ideal City

projects of change for the urban quality. A city where micro-projects of change are functional to a dynamics that aims at
refurbishing what already exists and renewing the modalities of life and of consumption of urban spaces in an un-growth
perspective (Bradley, 2011), rather than at an infinite growth of the cities, or at the expansion of built spaces, or at the
proliferation of suburbs and shopping centres,
The next step concerns the contents, namely the territorial policies and the local practices that neighborhood
communities decide to undertake. Starting a process of environmentalization of the local policies and practices becomes
necessary in order to structure a new best practice of urban development with the mail goal of contrasting the unease
(housing and residential unease, of the inhabitants' quality of life) and encountering the well-being, meant as asense of
care for the environment and for those who live the urban space.
The environmentalization of policies and local practices becomes then synonym of urban quality, thus fostering the
attractiveness of neighborhoods committed to this new path from a residential, productive and touristic point of view.

2. Neighborhoods-laboratory and ecological cities

For big cities neighborhoods, choosing environmentalization means making the historical values of good living
contemporary again, that is taking care of the places we live in, paying attention to the environment that surrounds them
by increasing the value of the know how belonging to the identity of that part of the city. Applying environmentalization
to neighborhoods of different cities around the world resulted in the accomplishment of concrete actions, as well as in
the adoption of administrative acts and directions of territorial planning pointing to the promotion of virtuous behaviours
within the area of environmental management of the urban space.
Lets try to provide some examples, such as putting in place strategic plans specific of a given area, takingcare of
private and public green areas daily and with care; creating small enterprises committed to the themes of separate
collection and recycling of materials, as well as to the production of energy from renewable sources. Other examples
range from the birth of various activities - linked to tourist fruition- that practise courses of action in line with the principle
of sustainable tourism to promoting urban gardens, adopting processes of zero growth planning that helps in clamping
the indiscriminate consumption of urban space down and recovering the historic built-up area through techniques of
green building; from transport plans strongly aimed at sustainability to the massive support of the public transport via
railroad.
In this regard, important experimental projects of neighborhoods-laboratory to consider are the Solar City in Linz, the
Am Schlierberg in Freiburg and the BedZed in London. They all make use of energy produced by renewable sources,
with energy-saving construction, free from cars, and full of pedestrian walks and bicycle paths well integrated into the
public transport line, and characterised by a large presence of green and very wide streets. Also the Spanish city of
Vitoria-Gasteiz, near Bilbao, in the Basque Country, has been identified by the European Union as Green European
Capital 2012. The Spanish city, with its approximately 240.000 inhabitants, has put in practice concrete actions to
improve the urban environment from a sustainable point of view. This path started about 30 years ago and has been
marked by two main features: first of all, a high level of active participation of the citizens in the administrative choices,
with citizens organized neighborhood by neighborhood; and secondly, a uniform view shared by all political forces, even
those of different political belief. This led to some very important results for the city as a whole and for its single
272

MIC _ My Ideal City

neighborhoods. Around the city, a green ring of almost 622 hectares developed, restraining the possibility of building
within sustainable limits, and bringingalmost 600.000 new visitors to Vitoria; furthermore, 73% of the new houses is
state-owned, with a fixed ceiling for prizes, and equipped with photovoltaic solar panels; water and energy consumption
has been declining of 10% during the last five years despite the population increase; the relationship between green
belts and population is of 42.12 square meters per citizen, and all residents have at their disposal a park or a garden
within 300 meters from their houses; the city center has been completely pedestrianized, car parks are mainly
underground and the fee to leave cars in parking lots at surface level has tripled in 2010, raising from 90 cents to 2.50
euros per 90 minutes; the use of public transport during the last eighteen months has increased of 42%.

Figure 1. Vitoria-Gasteiz, The Basque Country, Spain. Example of urban regeneration

An interesting case study at international level is that of the American city of Detroit. Since the Sixties, Detroit has lost
more than 150.000 inhabitants, and nowadays is experiencing the problem of whole neighborhoods which are deserted
and neglected, the so-called feral neighbourhood.
In a situation like this, it is possible to try and relaunch the city through forms of alliance between private and public,
mainly represented by non-governmental associations and organizations (ONG). These alliances between private and
public work in accordance with the public administration on urban requalification projects which are widespread and
based on the following key points:
1. birth of gardens and farms within the city, with the aim to develop new agricultural economies;
2. creation of green aisles to link the parts of the city which are still fully inhabited;
3. development of plein-air cultural and museum activities;

273

MIC _ My Ideal City

4. redefinition of the fiscal taxation in order to reward the original and innovative use of the neglected grounds and
buildings. Finally, the city may choose to focus on scientific research, technology innovation and green car
industry to relaunch its economy, highly affected by the crisis of the traditional car industry.
These case studies also offer the chance to discuss the movement of the so-called transition towns, born from the
intuitions and the works of Rob Hopkins and from his initial strategic project Kinsale Energy Descent Plan. This plan was
first created as scholastic exercise, but soon became a methodological action plan, driving the transition towards a
pattern of development with a deeply ecological content.
The movement of the transition towns face a great challenge especially in big urban neighborhoods such as Brixton, in
London. Here, the project Transition Town Brixton is tackling the reduction of energy consumption and of carbon dioxide
emissions with public projects, as well as the reinforcement of public transport and sustainable mobility. It is also
supporting innovative practices of waste recycling, and the development of urban gardens. A crucial factor in large urban
contests, is also the great importance given to developing paths of awareness and education available to all citizens.
Thus, in Brixton, for instance, this involves about 60,000 persons potentially interestedin the project, as well as a wider
public, less attentive to the environmental values if compared to the public of little rural centers, which are the natural
field of application for transition towns.

3. The new neighborhoods: contemporary, hospitable, innovative

These different experiences clarify how the set of initiatives adopted can be lived as practices that contribute to make
neighborhoods highly contemporary, hospitable, and innovative. Contemporary because they adopt a model of
development which pays attention to the care of the places in contrast with the disposable model of production and
consumption of objects, services and urban spaces, by now in decline, which has demonstrated all its limits in terms of
social, environmental, economic and occupational costs, both in the cities of the economically advanced countries and in
the cities of the poorest countries.
Hospitable because the beauty, the pleasantness and the liveableness of the neighborhoods reinforce both the pleasure
of the hospitality in a touristic sense, and the duty of welcoming the new residents.
Innovative because the greater quality of life attracts new economic activities linked to the world of technology and of
digital culture.
The environmentalization of the urban space becomes therefore the basis for the construction of cities of care and
beauty, where the sustainability of life and intense human relationships are deemed essentials. A green city will spend
much less to heal its own ills, than to increase its capacities. The neighborhoods will have the task to test themselves
as concrete laboratories of the future and precursors of public actions that will involve the urban area in its entirety.

References
MARCELLONI M. (a cura di), Questioni della citt contemporanea, Franco Angeli, Milano 2005.
AMIN A., THRIFT N., Citt. Ripensare la dimensione urbana, Il Mulino, Bologna 2005.
SENNETT R., The uses of disorder. Personal identity and city life, Costa&Nolan, Milano 1999.
274

MIC _ My Ideal City

From Utopia to Non-Place. Identity and Society in the Citys Space

Simona Pecoraio, Universidad de Sevilla, Dpto. HTCA ETSA

1. Introduction
This paper investigates the possibilities of (re)definition of architecture based on a critical reflection on the factors that
form the current culture and thought -in an opened frame that includes its natural, artificial and virtual elements, and its
mixtures-, to open the complexity of the social changes, and its repercussion on the citys space.
In this particular frame, and according to the general aim marked by this congress, it describes various matters: from the
transformations of the urban dynamics to its implications in the socio-spatial processes, crossing and exceeding its
political, social and cultural connotations, taking the citys space as a reference in the contemporaneousness.
It does not concern to the space of material and dimensional relations, but to the space of the city alive and lived,
considered as the sum of the traces that constitute the human realities, where the distance between the constructed
world and the imagined world is diluted, and where the city is nothing more than the choice of a shared experience.
The city is a cognitive, interpretative and communicative system, where people, activities and places belong
simultaneously to several types of space, which content is characterized by its non-linearity and by its discontinuity,
reflecting the terms of a reality based on the discontinuity, the diversity and the plurality of the events.
These events do not still produce visible and immediate effects in the conformation of the urban landscape, but
determine constant processes, which generate forms of relations as ways of thinking about the society.
In these processes every citizen can generate his own space of relation, creating a city that reflects the multiple urban
experiences, which coexist in the territory, and modifying the forms of the citys spaces and the manners of living.
Parallel cities to the physical space, done by the people, whose social status remains the same, but whose cultures
differ increasingly; and done by spaces, to which denied their identity, but they look for their potentials of place, with
multiple physical and social dimensions.

2. The citys space

The citys space is never neutral, nor is it the pretension of its conceptualization: from its location to the offers for its
uses, from its homogenization to the strategies of control and domination necessary for it, the citys space establishes
rules of domination and subordination that are represented in it.
In fact, as Henry Lefebvre would say in Reflections on the Politics of Space (Lefebvre, 1976) space is not a scientific
object removed from ideology and politics; it has always been political and strategic. If space has an air of neutrality and
indifference whit regard to its contents and thus seems to be purely formal, the epitome of rational abstraction, it is
275

MIC _ My Ideal City

precisely because it has been occupied and used, and has already been the focus of past processes whose traces are
not always evident on the landscape. Space has been shaped and molded from historical and natural elements, but this
has been a political process. Space is political and ideological. It is a product literally filled with ideologies.
Space is not a model of proposing (nor imposing), as unquestionable object, in which the perceptions and
representations of how it is necessary to use it and to live in it are implicit, but it is the plot of relations that arise in it and
across which the experiences and even the contradictions of the social life are expressed and represented in it.
The "appropriate space"- as Lefebvre defines in The Production of Space (Lefebvre, 1974) -, "a natural space modified
in order to serve the needs and possibilities of a group that it has been appropriated by that group", not like the putting in
scene of the empirical man and of the domesticated space - "dominated" as would tint the author-, sham of the
programmed and normalized life, but of the appropriation as subversive action that denies the official versions of use of
the space and commits an outrage against its forms of control.
"Anthropologic place", as Marc Aug defines it in Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity
(Aug, 1995), a place in which there are the definitions that allow to understand the variations of the reality -set of
sudden and unforeseeable changes-, where the space is not a delimitation, but a relation, and where the humans have
the possibility of transforming themselves, establishing forms of their own identity and their society in the citys space.
Or "human environment", as Tomas Maldonado describes it in Ambiente humano e ideologa: notas para una ecologa
crtica (Maldonado, 1970), "constructed partly by ourselves ", because "our environmental reality () is the result of
what Vico would have defined as the aptitude to do" and because to make our environment and to make us constitutes
() the same process.

3. Identity and Society

The relation between identity and society opens the possibility of a complementary vision that tries to reflect the
complexity of the different interpretations of reality, and implies the importance of investigating its paper in the citys
space.
These interpretations open the possibilities of diverse levels of approximation for the definition of space, and the city
offers the strategies in order to which these could be superposed, not as a material, but as an intellectual device.
As Flix de Aza explains in "La necesidad y el deseo" (Aza, 2003), the cities always had "petrified the image of our
desires": "painting and drawings were sufficient for the ancient city; the word realized industrial city; cinema and
photography were enough for the 20th century. But the city of the 21st century escapes to these means technician of
representation": "games of the illusion", as them Jean Baudrillard would define in "Simulacra and Simulation"
(Baudrillard, 1977).
On the other hand, according to Peter Eisenman in "The end of the classical: the end of the beginning, the end of the
end" (Eisenman, 1984), "The first fiction of the architecture is the representation". And he adds that "when the distinction
between representation and reality disappears, when the reality is only a simulation, the representation loses his source
a priori of significance, and then it is when it happens to be only a simulation".

276

MIC _ My Ideal City

In this respect, there are also several authors who offer reflections about identity and its relation with reality that is, how
the thought influences the representation actually- appropriating of it-, influencing in addition its conformation and
determining its transformations.
For example, Nelson Goodman, in "Ways of Worldmaking" (Goodman, 1978), defines the metaphor as the cognitive
element with which we construct "world versions", across the overflows between image and word, with which we
symbolize every area of the human experience.
Maldonado describes how -from the philosophical and scientific thought, without forgetting the contributions of the
literary and artistic description- "it has realized the delicate operation of transforming a philosophical notion into a
sensitive reality" (Maldonado, 1970).
Or Oliver Sacks in "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" (Sacks, 1991) speaks about the Korsakoff's syndrome of
Mr. Thompson, which generates a world to every instant, in a way not so different from the narrative need with "that each
of us builds and lives through a "story".
Revisiting these relations is not especially innovative. Nor it is to do it across the architecture. Alvaro Siza said: "In my
opinion the example, on having thought Architecture, always came from the writers, and between them the Poets, very
competent makers of the record and of the dream, inhabitants of the loneliness".
Nevertheless, from these considerations, it is possible to think in reality and imagination, as equivalent terms, spatially
and verbally.
Consistently, to speak about the architecture does not refer to its objects, but to a form of thought, and to speak about
the space does not refer to the delimiting of possible, but to a mutual understanding of different realities.
Resorting to the literature, Italo Calvino, in " Six memos for the next millennium " (Calvino, 1988) demonstrated the need
of the search of a knowledge that allows "to look at the world from another logic, other manners of knowing", and he
asked himself: "Is it legitimate to extrapolate of the speech of the sciences an image of the world that corresponds to my
desires? If the operation that I am trying attracts me, it is because I feel that it might get tied up again to a very ancient
thread of the history of the poetry".

4. From Utopia to Non-Place

When Thomas More, in 1516, visited the paradisiacal island that himself called Utopia, he named a tradition -begun
probably by Pindar and his island of happy men, and Plato and his ideal Republic- which trace is read to the present
day.
Nevertheless, his political, religious and social idea did not do explicit an urban model, using for it the contemporary
London to his epoch.
It will be from the Renaissance, in the Tommasso Campanella's City of the Sun or in Francis Bacon's New Atlantis -in
which he got as literary topic the utilization of the scientific and technical advances for the improvement of the living
conditions (predecessor of the statements of science fiction)-, that the Utopias will turn into projects, of a perfect, highly
rationalist and functionalist world.
On the ends of the 19th century, in News from Nowhere, William Morris does not only describe a political ideology, but
also its ideal design and its aesthetic preferences.
277

MIC _ My Ideal City

From the 20th century, Utopias do not serve to construct ideal worlds, but to understand better the world in which we
live, as sum of the cities that we live and that we are capable of imagining.
Or better, as David Harvey explains in "Spaces of Hope" (Harvey, 2000): "There is a time and a place in the incessant
human effort for changing the world that the alternative visions, it is not important how fantastic they could be, they are
useful to shape powerful political forces of change".
The author proposes a differentiation between "Utopias of spatial form" and "Utopias as social process".
Utopias of spatial form, which begin from the already mentioned Utopian projects, "can be characterized as Utopias of
spatial form, since the temporality of the social process, the dialectics of the social change -the real history- are
excluded, where as the social stability is guaranteed by means of a spatial fixed form"
The risk in this type of Utopia is that it materializes as restrictive forms of control, turning degenerate Utopias": a
harmonious space, without conflicts and separated of the real world.
In fact, this type of Utopia materializes, according to the author, only in those spaces that do not assume social
responsibilities, but that reproduce the images of a city that has never existed and that was never inhabited: Disneyland,
malls, residential zones.
Also Jean Baudrillard spoke about Disneyland as an example, between others, of the "mechanism of dissuasion put in
functioning to regenerate the wrong way the fiction of the reality" (Baudrillard, 1977).
Aug, on the other hand, defines like "non-places" those containers dedicated to the production and to the consumption,
empty in theirs iconography and in theirs contents, and defined only by theirs absence of identity (Aug, 1995).
A logic of consumption that is reflected in the architecture, in the urbanism and even in the protection of the heritage,
valued for terms of market, of tourism and of spectacle: Flix de Aza, would be call them real simulacra (Aza, 2003).
On the other hand, continuing with Harvey, Utopias as social process develop out of the spatial limits, so much that do
not need to be tied to any place, and they are expressed in temporary terms. The author recognizes the capitalism as
the best case of this type of Utopia, which degenerated form is the inequality in the economic development.
According to Harvey, the fact that both Utopias only have materialized in its degenerated forms, it means neither its
failure, nor its denial, but it indicates the need of his reformulation.
In addition to the Utopias as social process, there are media spaces or cyberspaces too, that they make real the virtual
spaces that in other times were reserved to the dreams and to the representations: world in construction in which,
relocated, we locate and displace () since not a long time ago, whose remained attached to the land they lived in the
virtuality so much as us even if without adapted technologies, as Michel Serres says in Atlas (Serres, 1995).
And these new spaces open the possibility of a complementary vision that tries to reflect the complexity of the different
interpretations of the city, that is not an emptiness that contains objects and subjects, but an interconnected network of
singularities.
Rem Koolhaas -that he refuses to believe that the globalization would carry to the homogenization- warned that "the
same process of modernization drives in every place to result different, to new specificities, to new singularities ".
And also Alvaro Siza recognizes the fragmentation as "consequence of constructing the city" (Siza, 1992), with which the
idea that he identifies with the city is "that of complexity and coincidence of diverse activities " (Siza, 2003).

278

MIC _ My Ideal City

5. Final considerations
Rem Koolhaas in "The story of the pool" (Koolhaas, 1977), considers the floating pool as "the first step, modestly but
radically () to improve the world thanks to the architecture", and in the movement of the "architects or rescuers"
wallowing, it will turn the vehicle that it will allow them to flee towards the freedom, coming to Manhattan, imagined place,
and the possible only one.
The same Manhattan-laboratory that Koolhaas describes in "Delirious New York" (Koolhaas, 2004) as "a mythical island
where the invention and the putting to test of a metropolitan way of life and his consequent architecture could be applied
as a collective experiment in which the city informs was turning into a factory of artificial experience, where reality and
nature were stopping existing ".
The network of proposed ideas does not want to be exhaustive, nor tries to include all the subject matters of reflection on
the citys space and the relationship between identity and society in it.
It is more: all of them are nodes to completing and their relations are traced, as a reading always interrupted, and
uninterrupted simultaneously, in that the disconnected fragments are placed each one in the space.
The question is about the city -and the network of relations that constitute it-, and about the precariousness of the
processes that have generated it: in it, architecture cannot excuse from thinking its position to satisfy the desires and the
needs of the man, in the generation of the world.

References
MALDONADO, T., Ambiente humano e ideologa: notas para una ecologa crtica, 1970.
LEFEBVRE, H., The Production of Space, 1974.
LEFEBVRE, H., Reflections on the Politics of Space, 1976.
BAUDRILLARD, J., Cultura y simulacro, 1977.
GOODMAN, N., Maneras de hacer mundos, 1978.
EISENMAN, P., The end of the classical: the end of the beginning, the end of the end, 1984.
CALVINO, I., Seis propuestas para el prximo milenio, 1988.
SACKS, O., El hombre que confundi a su mujer con un sombrero, 1991.
SERRES, M., Atlas, 1995.
AUG, M., Los "no lugares": espacios del anonimato: una antropologa de la sobremodernidad, 1995.
HARVEY, D., Spaces of Hope, 2000.
FRAMPTON, K., Alvaro Siza: obra completa, 2000.
AZA, F. de, La necesidad y el deseo, 2003.
KOOLHAAS, R., Delirious New York, 2004.

279

MIC _ My Ideal City

Theories and architectures towards new city soundscapes

Ida Recchia, Universit della Calabria

1. Introduction
Why sound?
Given a set of definitions and practices, well-established today, of sound as a quality dimension of built space, new
questions arise. Starting from the theoretical experiences of: Soundscape Ecology that considers sound as an ecological
parameter for environment (Schafer, 1977); the multidisciplinary approach to Sound Architecture of France Research
(Laboratory CRESSON, 1990) that introduce qualitative Sound Maps to describe the urban space; and from the
interpretation of Scandinavian research on Sensorial Design that illustrate how the senses can become parameters for
architectural process, sound can be considered as a contemporary code for the government of quality of urban space.
As demonstrated by theories and built or imagined architectures, sound, in the large and middle scale, can be today
considered not only a property that describe and characterize, but also an operative tool for modifying or
safeguarding the sound-quality of space. Moreover the architectural production reveals today, in advance and before
every urban regulation, the innovative qualities of sound in design field. Some virtuous projects (LoLa Landscape
Architects, MVRDV, Zumthor, Mangado) anticipate the idea of using sound as aesthetic component of design and
demonstrate the possibility to generate sound ambiance employing the use of sound effects. Design practice and
critical and analytical theory share in defining a new way to understand and transform space in sound key. The theme
of sound, born in 70s, needs now a new interpretation after forty years of productions of sound-oriented theories and
sound-oriented architectures that can (re)direct today the urban debate on the theme of sound.

2. Theories
Definitions between sound and noise
There are many definitions of sound and noise, are items from art, music, architecture, urbanism, which marked the
basic steps in defining the relationship between sound, noise and space. Among the first, one of the collaborators of
Kevin Lynch, Michael Southworth1 introduced a method for interpreting and mapping urban sound, developing one of the
first examples of sound analysis of built environment in key quality. Of great importance in the series of definitions of
sound and noise is the concept expressed by contemporary musical experience, for which the it is noise more than
sound that assumes quality expression.
1 The theories expressed by Michael Southworth is the result of discussions arising from the work on The Image of the city and are collected in the
text: SOUTHWORTH, M., The sonic environment of cities, in Envirornment and Behavior vol.1, n. 1, p. 49-70, 1969.

280

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 1. Sound-map. Southworth

The futurist Luigi Russolo, in 30s, suggests the interpretation of noise as aesthetic material, just like the French
composer Pierre Schaeffer2, in 60s, which introduces the theme of real sounds of city and rural environment as possible
elements of a musical composition. And then, John Cage3, in 90s, with his compositions of purely percussive music,
emphasizes the idea that noise (spontaneous or induced) can assume the same value of sound.
Furthermore in architecture and urban planning, the practice of protection from noise, suggested by building regulation,
are challenged with the positive concept of noise. The noise, as sound can be reduced, but not completely cleared to
give qualification and identity to a built space. In the article Espace de la ruemeur (1993), Pierre Marietan remarks the
possibility of classifying an area not only monitoring sound levels, but also considering the background noise, the sound
emerging events and the sound signals, which in turn provide insight into a fuller reality of space, giving it depth and
sensorial thickness. And, more recently, Henry Torgue4 (2005) perfected a sound reading system by introducing the
concept of Sound Urban Form. In parallel, the concept of sound, is now comparable to noise, because both capable of
representing a quality of space. In contrast to the vision of the canadian school of Murray Schafer (70s) that emphasizes
the beauty of rural soundscape, the laboratories of Grenoble CRESSON now work on sound especially in urban context.
The acoustic space of city, with all the noise artificial and human, is intended as a toolbox of sound events that can be
reviewed and approved to become sound actions governed by actions of man. Sound events are proposed not only as
2 French composer and theorist (1910-1995), has collected many of his theories in the Trait des objets musicaux, 1966.
3 American composer (1912-1992), among the writings on the concept of noiseinclude: CAGE, J., Silence, Western University Press, Middleton,
1996.
4 TORGUE H., Immersion et emergence: qualites et significations des formes sonores urbaines, in Espace socits n.122, march 2005,
p.157.166.

281

MIC _ My Ideal City

acoustic phenomena to read and interpret for describing the space of a built site, but as an operative tool reproducible
and repeatable thanks to design actions.

Figure 2. Boston Sound-Map. Murray Schafer

3. Architectures
Practices on sound as an aesthetic data
The projectual examples demonstrate today the strong application of sound as an aesthetic data space. The examples
are useful sources to provide elements that define what are the operation modes, the recurring characters in the use of
sound in design. They anticipate a qualitative view of sound, still not present in technical standards or building
regulations, therefore not widely applied in common urban construction.
Among the latest, the one of MVRDV with Penelope Dean Noisescape, is an example of generative architecture in the
neighbourhood scale. The reflection on noise starts, in this case, from the densification of cities phenomena. If urban
areas are designed with an increasing population density, it results a much closer contact between infrastructures and
core functions (working, housing). The solution suggested by the architects is a form, the hollow form generated through
geometric parameterizations of urban noise introduced into a software, usually used for the measurement of traffic.
Another example is the project, Living room, completed in 2007 in Glenhausen, a German small town characterized by
a quiet sound climate. The architects Gabi Seifertet Gtz Stockmann in collaboration with a sound artist Achim
Wollscheid have introduced a system of small invisible speakers and microphones along the outer surface and inside the
building, projecting sounds different combinations. Here we find the theme of the social function of sound, that creates a
link between the private space of dwelling and the quiet neighbourhood through an immaterial interface, but strong and
distinctive. However is the project of LOLA Architects to better show how the manipulation and the production of the
noise is well-integrated in the architectural practice. The project called Wilgevende (2009), transforms a neighbourhood
near a rail crossing. It has noise problems, but also a very pleasant nature, often made of trees shaken by the wind. This
suggested an action on open spaces, made of natural elements modelled in the shape and texture of plants. The high
soil clods were designed to create paths where the noise of the train is attenuated. These clods not only perform this
function, but with many green textures interact with the effect of noise filtering5. The filtering varies with the grass
5 For a definition of filtering see AUGOJARD, J.; TORGUE, H.; et. al., A lecoute de lenvironnement. Repertoires des effects sonores, Editions
Parenthses, Marseille, 1995, trad. it., Il Repertorio degli Effetti Sonori, LIM, Quaderni di Musica/Realt 52, Lucca, 2003.

282

MIC _ My Ideal City

texture that ranges from time to time on the faces of the prism, which gives form to the grass. In this way noise is
handled, but is also produced by an additional trick: the inclusion of trees with different leaves in a windy area. And so
Peter Zumthor6 experiments with the alternation of varied sound effects of resonance in the Swiss Pavilion presented in
Hanover in 2000. Crossing the halls, you will hear variations of the acoustic response to the sound made by footsteps
and voices and varied by the different textures of wood. Similarly Manuel Mangado recreates a background noise
produced by the water to follow a metaphorical process that brings the Spanish pavilion of Zaragoza (2008) to resemble
a forest. The building, surrounded by thin pillars covered with clay, approaches each element with the sensory sphere,
the acoustic, tactile and visual one, and also it recreates an allusive humidity and temperature. Materials and shapes
reproduce a natural environment, transferring from the spontaneous to the artificial. The system is simple, but
suggestive. Even here, in an experimental building, a pavilion, the sound is within the parameters of the project,
recreating a cultural condition of sound that evokes a natural environment. Space with sound becomes narrative and it is
enriched by sense.

Figure . Noisescape. MVRDV

4. Towards new city soundscapes

Extension and communication of new concepts of sound
Both the types of examples, definitions and architectures, are significant attempts to bring out the sound as active
dimension of urban context. This dimension is also highlighted by local backgrounds, it starts from the awareness of
sound by people, or artist groups or designer and researchers. This dimension expects now to be part of a global vision
that involves the local and the individual in a more general context. The quality definitions of sound that come from
different cultural fields and the application of sound as aesthetic data in architectural design field, are concepts that
require now a new expansion and communication. This work aims to highlighting a series of points as a suggestions for
6 Cfr. ZUMTHOR, P., Atmosfere. Ambienti architettonici. Le cose che ci circondano, Mondatori Electa, Milano, 2007.

283

MIC _ My Ideal City

the extension of this concepts, using the method that underline definitions and phenomena (projects). Definitions set the
possibilities and the cultural value of sound and phenomena highlight the possibility to control, promote and plan the
sound dimension as spontaneous action for design approach. These phenomena are often incidental and not a real
system. It could address the sound dimension in a perspective of creating integrated strategies, guidelines and actions
oriented to the sound dimension. Resuming what we propose for a more complete view of the urban sound dimension is
to:
- develop the definition of sound dimension as an active component of urban context;
- encourage the development of the awareness of sound dimension for citizens;
- encourage the integration of survey instruments for the acquisition of sound data of urban context in qualitative terms;
- translate the spontaneous aesthetic application of sound in design field in local strategies and global guidance;
- enhance and promote actions to safeguard, planning and design the sound dimension of urban landscape.

References
AUGOJARD, J.; TORGUE, H., A lecoute de lenvironnement. Repertoires des effects sonores, Editions Parenthses,
Marseille, 1995, trad. it., Il Repertorio degli Effetti Sonori, LIM, Quaderni di Musica/Realt 52, Lucca 2003.
BLESSER, B.; SALTER, L., Spaces Speak, Are you Listening ? Experiencing Aural Architecture, MIT press, Cambridge
2006.
CHELKOFF, G., Prototype sonore architectureaux, CRESSON, Grenoble 2003.
DANDREL, L., Larchitecture sonore, construire avec le sons, PUCA, collection recherches, Paris 2000.
DAUMAL, I.; DOMENECH, F., La arquitectura del sonido, in Tectonica n.14, p. 28-39, 2002.
SCHAFER, M., The Tuning of the World, McClelland and Stewart Ltd., Toronto, 1977 trad. it., Il paesaggio sonoro,
Ricordi, Milano 1985.
SOUTHWORTH, M., The sonic environment of cities, in Envirornment and Behaviour vol.1, n.1, p. 49-70, 1969.
ZARDINI, M.; SCHIVELBUSCH, W., Sense of the City: an alternate approach to urbanism, Lars Mller, Baden 2005.

284

MIC _ My Ideal City

Envisioning Cities
Giovanna Sonda, IRSRS Istituto Regionale di Studi e Ricerca Sociale

The paper investigates how territorial visions drive the change of places and raise a public debate on urban
development. To this end I adopt a process point of view which enables to reconstruct and account for the action-net
that takes shape around urban development/renewal projects. Such a choice implies conceiving cities as the interplay of
practices, artifacts and narratives (Sonda, Coletta, Gabbi, 2010) where material and social aspects interact in the
endless process of (re)shaping the urban texture.
The paper presents and discusses two examples of urban visions related to the city of Trento (Italy) highlighting two
different ways of envisioning its future. The first kind of vision consists of the strategic plan of the city of Trento outlining
priorities and objectives to be fulfilled. Attention is paid on the chain of actions and discourses developed and justified
through that narrative. The second example deals with the rendering of a military base realized in the form of a leaflet
and distributed by the Public Administration to the inhabitants of Mattarello, a suburb south of Trento chosen as the
location where the base should be placed. In this case images are in charge of visualizing urban change. To put it with
Sderstrm (1996, 252) representations are not the passive repository of an exterior planning process, but one of the
key sites of urbanism in the making. In fact, around that rendering a lively debate has risen. Both examples underline
the performative power of urban visions whether they are in form of narratives or images.

1. A strategic narrative
A strategic plan provides a scenario that projects the city into a near future and traces the steps to reach that goal. In
other words it is at the same time the picture of a future city and a programmatic document. Here I will refer to the
strategic plan of the city of Trento 2001-2010 because it enables us to confront the visions contained in that document
with the present urban configuration. The purpose is not to make a checklist of what has been realized and to what
extent, rather to account how those objectives have been translated into choices, investments and projects, that is, how
the strategic plan has informed current practices of redevelopment of Trento and which new narratives it has produced.
The strategic plan of Trento1 contains an urban vision that is not merely the representation of a new shape; it is
something more and something different, since it let us imagine our own city giving the feeling that we are part of this
change. The openness of the strategic2 plan is well summarized in its title, Trento, city of chances, which does not

1 http://www.laboratoriourbano.tn.it/pianostrategico/documenti/58.pdf
2 Within discourse analysis, strategy is considered a linguistic construct that serves to make sense of the world and organize it (Hardy, Palmer,
Phillips 2000, 1229-1230). Similarly, strategic visions do not mirror reality, they shape it.

285

MIC _ My Ideal City

provide a specific orientation that helps imagining Trento in 2010, but sketches a general framework that leaves room for
many different versions of the city persuading that everyone will have the opportunity to live better.
The document is composed of two parts: the first one sketches the vision through four strategic themes, while the
second part illustrates the objectives (10) and the actions (73) that specify the streams. Moreover a set of keywords
(integration, innovation, internationalization, dialogue, quality) has been provided as a common ground to make the plan
coherent. In fact there are some actions that cris-cross multiple themes since they can be addressed from different
perspectives and meet different objectives. This is the case, for instance, of the project for the new science center
Muse which represents at the same time an action within the first thematic stream, Trento, city of urban quality,
having the purpose of renovating areas characterized by idle industrial infrastructures, and within the fourth stream
dedicated to the dialogue between the historical city and the contemporary one.
The project of the new museum of science thus connects two objectives: to foster the renovation of an area formerly
occupied by the Michelin factory and to balance the role of tradition in the promotion of the image of Trento using the
levers of culture and innovation. At present it is still too early to evaluate the potential of this project to enliven a
depressed area. Instead it is not too early to analyse the effects and by-products of this strategic measure in terms of
urban marketing. The project is rooted in a wider narrative3 on city renewal through cultural investments and, in its turn,
itself works as a narrative supporting institutional vision and related initiatives aiming at positioning Trento as a cultural
destination. The episode is interesting because it enable us to observe the generative power of vision and how it
translates into a multiplicity of projects and discourses.
So far the vision of Trento as a cultural destination has informed many projects and initiatives and is playing a strong role
in reshaping the urban fabric. The science center is one of these new buildings that are in charge of renewing marginal
areas while also making the whole city an interesting destination. It is not a case that these architectural projects are
signed by famous architects who represent a profitable brand in promoting the image of the city.
Conceiving Trento as a cultural destination not only has materialized in new infrastructures, it has also justified
investments in other directions such as for the Festival of Economics, research centers, the internationalization of the
University. They all belong to this general strategy of making Trento attractive both for a cultural oriented tourist and for
professionals and high qualified researchers from abroad. But the generative power of this vision is not confined to the
above mentioned projects. On the contrary, that narrative becomes part of other discourses such as the candidature of
the Northest region4 as European capital of culture for 2019. On the one hand Trento becomes part of wider plan, thanks
to those investments that project it as a cultural destination; on the other hand, it is the candidature itself that
corroborates that scenario and makes it effective. In fact, despite it is only a candidature, it has already become a matter
of concern and entered other discourses5 .
The process of image construction begins a self-feeding mechanism in which each narrative relies on the other thus
making it difficult to distinguish which is the goal and which is the tool in this chain of actions. At a micro scale the
strategic plan of Trento functions in the same way. For instance, it is not clear whether the science center project serves
It recalls the project of a new urban district in the western harbour of Malm supplied with 100% locally produced renewable energy (Corvellec
and Riesberg, 2007). Although in that case the organizing principle was sustainability instead of culture, the projects are similar for the use of two
topical narratives that should make them appealing thus increasing their approval.
4 This area includes two regions, Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia, and two autonomous Provinces, Trento and Bolzano.
5 See the program of the forth Festival Citt Impresa: http://www.festivaldellecittaimpresa.it/
3

286

MIC _ My Ideal City

the purposes of renovating a dismissed area thus contributing also to renew the urban image or the opposite: the
rhetoric on urban renewal and city marketing legitimates investments for a new museum of science. Such a
misunderstanding roots in the fact that vision is strategic not only because it orients the decision making, but also
because it acts as a form of accountability for the choices made (Hardy, Palmer and Phillips, 2000). In other words,
vision acts both prospectively orienting a course of action, and retrospectively as a justification (Sonda, 2010).
This episode shows that the effects of urban vision are not measurable only in terms of goals-results because a narrative
such as the strategic plan opens a public discourse that intersects with other narratives/projects creating unexpected
synergies. Moreover a strategic plan organize space as well as infrastructures do: it defines priorities and foresees uses
and functions thus opening a space for action in which not only the city configuration but also its image, meanings and
uses are negotiated.

2. Debating through images

So far we have discussed the power of narratives in envisioning cities destiny and tracing a direction for their
development, now we turn attention on visual artifacts which represent urban change through images.
While in a strategic plan the vision is described by means of objectives and articulated into activities, the rendering of a
project is self-sufficient: it evokes the whole scenario by means of images and makes visible what is still immaterial
operating a translation and reduction that enables us not only to see abstract things, but also to imagine how it could be
living there. Renderings constitute an important and delicate part of the architectural argumentation as they offer a point
of view into the future building, orientate and direct the attention and subjectivise the project (Houdart, 2008, 50). In
fact the function of a rendering is not to reproduce a building, but to anticipate the change it may produce, which means
considering the impact of the project both on the material and the social organization.
In order to show how the building becomes part of the urban texture, renderings provide an idealized scenario capable of
suggesting possible uses and ways of life related to the activities and functions conceived in the project. As a
consequence aesthetics and politics are interwoven in the attempt to make the project appealing and make people
experience the new urban condition and identify themselves within the scenario depicted. On the other hand, given that
a rendering is not the exact representation of the infrastructure, this leaves room for stakeholders to negotiate their
visions confronting them with the institutional one. The project for the new military base in a suburb of Trento is a case in
point. Here the visual dimension plays a crucial role in the controversy between inhabitants and local authority.
The committee campaigning against the base realized a counter-leaflet resembling for size, colours and font the
institutional one. Such a graphic device was meant to stress the structural and substantial discrepancies between the
administrative vision and that of the local community. While the institutional rendering minimizes the visual impact of the
new settlement and underlines the possibilities for inhabitants to use the facilities6 of the base, the counter leaflet
stresses the visual, natural and social impact of the new buildings providing inhabitants with another version of the
changes that would have stricken their neighbourhood. In other words, visual artefacts not only serve the purpose of
The rendering of the public administration recalls the original function of urban planning that is to organize objects in space, treating people as
objects, that is reduced to social types, operators of functions (living, working, travelling, recreating) or of standard needs (norms of comfort, of
noise, of household goods) (Sderstrm, 1996, 275).

287

MIC _ My Ideal City

envisioning the future but are real weapons of a public debate in which multiple versions of the project are put at the
test7.
Although the episode deals with a classic urban controversy related to the construction and placement of a new
infrastructure, nonetheless it is emblematic because it enables us to recognize that a building far from being a univocal,
stable entity, is not a static object but a moving project (Latour and Yaneva, 2008, 80).
Moreover this episode shows that urban visions not only anticipate how a place could change, they also interact with
peoples wishes. This is particularly true for renderings that offer a direct visualizing experience. Although graphic
simulations act metaphorically reducing the complexity and stressing some aspects over others8, they can also add
complexity to common interpretations of the city (Sderstrm, 2011, 115). The counter-leaflet elaborated by a group of
inhabitants goes in this direction: it provides another way of framing the project enlightening the drawbacks for the
neighbourhood. The complexity added by this point of view may represent a constraint for the time schedule, but it could
instead inform a collaborative planning process. In both cases the debate is a way of envisioning the project (Corvellec,
2001, 207) and represents the site where technical aspects, ethical issues and graphic devices converge and confront
envisioning multiple avenues.

3. Final remarks
While in the first example vision is a narrative that translates into new infrastructures and cultural initiatives, the second
case follows an opposite direction: here the architectural project comes first and then it opens a public discourse. This
confront underlines the role of representations in driving urban development and illustrates the socio-technical networks
that take shape around an urban project. Their power roots in the capability of envisioning urban change. In fact
although not material, both visions were real in peoples and city managers discourses.
As Latour recently observed (2008), spatial issues are political because people are interested in the organization of their
living environment which influences their quality of life and their everyday practices. For this reason, although the design
of city contains technical aspects that may not be within everyones reach, it is a contentious object. Accordingly, the
way urban change is represented become itself a matter of concern. Recognizing the political character of vision enables
us to understand why strategic plans, city marketing narratives, projects for new infrastructures are so effective in
organizing space and mobilizing social networks.

Latour in his Visualisation and Cognition (1986) discusses the role of visual tools in the history of science and more widely the power of
representations in making people believe what is not visible.
8 See Yanevas study (2005) on architects scaling procedures.
7

288

MIC _ My Ideal City

References
CORVELLEC H., Talks on track debating urban infrastructure projects in Culture and Organizations n. 7, 2001.
CORVELLEC H., The new rhetoric of Infrastructure projects, in CZARNIAWSKA B. and R. SOLLI (eds.) Organizing
metropolitan Space and discourse, Liber AB, Malm, 2001.
CORVELLEC H. and A. RISBERG, Sensegiving as mise-en-sens- The case of wind power development, in
Scandinavian Journal of Management, n. 23, 2007.
DUNFORD R. and D. JONES D., Narrative in Strategic Change, in Human Relations, n. 53 (9), 2000.
HARDY C., I. PALMER and N. PHILLIPS, Discourse as a strategic resource, in Human relations, n. 53 (9), 2000.
HOUDART S., Copying, Cutting and Pasting Social Spheres: Computer Designers Participation in Architectural
Projects, in Science Studies n. 21 (1), 2008.
LATOUR B. The space of controversies in New Geographies, n. 0, 2008.
LATOUR B. Visualization and Cognition: Thinking with eyes and hands, in H. Kuklick (ed.) Knowledge and Society
Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present, Jai Press, Greenwich, 1986.
LATOUR B. and A. YANEVA Give me a gun and I will make all buildings move: An ANTs view of Architecture, in R.
Geiser (ed.), Explorations in Architecture: teaching, Design, Research, Birkhauser, Basel, 2008.
SDERSTRM O., How Images Assemble the Urban World, in New Geographies, n. 4, 2011.
SDERSTRM O., Paper Cities: Visual Thinking in Urban Planning, in Cultural Geographies, n. 3 (3), 1996.
SONDA G., COLETTA C., GABBI F. (eds.), Urban Plots, Organizing Cities, Ashgate, Farnham, 2010.
SONDA G., Vision: the art of representing the invisible, SCOS proceedings. Available at:
http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/2447/. 2010.
YANEVA A. Scaling Up and Down: Extraction Trials in Architectural Design, in Social Studies of Science, n. 35, 2005.

289

3. Toward an energy efficient city

MIC _ My Ideal City

Toward an energy efficient city

Dario Trabucco, IUAV University of Venice

1. Cities as living organisms

Cities can be seen as living organism that require a vast range of inputs in order to live and work. In the past times,
medieval fortified cities had the capacity to sustain themselves for quite long periods during sieges, relying only on intra
moenia production and on the food and the good resources stored by the city. Nowadays, enormous amounts of
resources are needed by urban settlements, and sieges or isolation are no longer a threat. Therefore, the land surface
on which the city is built on is not capable to provide enough resources for all the inhabitants. Actually, its not usually
able to produce something any more.
For such reason cities now require several kind of inputs, that can be broadly classified in freights (construction
materials, food, etc.), water and energy. As all living organisms, the city processes its inputs and delivers some results
(services, other freights, etc.) while emitting wastes in the form of solid garbage, sewages and heat.
As such, many metabolic studies [Newman, 1999] exist on the input-output balance of cities as different use
efficiencies may exist and influence the processes that happen in the city that convert the different inputs into usable
outputs and discards.
Among the various inputs, energy seems to be an interesting topic of research because, according to the XIX century
physicist Boltzmann, life is primarily a struggle for energy. Additionally, the importance of energy to our society has
increased over the past few decades, both from an economic and from a social point of view.
In the last 35 years, at least since the 1974 energy crisis, the problem of the energy efficiency of human activities
acquired attention of transversal social sectors of the population and it has led to the formulation of a vast range of
energy-saving policies and norms.
When assessing the problem of the energy efficiency of entities as complex as a city, one is asked to deal both with the
organism as a whole and with all its-sub components as parts of a network (public lighting, transport, etc.) and as
single units (the energy efficiency of the buildings it is formed by, the industries that are present in the city etc.). Also,
some nonmaterial components have to be considered such as the behaviours of its inhabitants that are reflected in the
use of the various parts of the city.
Inhabitants of a city find a mutual benefit in living together and in sharing some services that wouldn't be provided to
smaller groups of people. Therefore, a fundamental aspect of a city is the provision of such network of personal links
between the people each other and with the institutions of the city. As such, transportation is an important topic in
modern societies and it plays an important role in the overall energy balance of a Country. In fact, approximately 30% of
293

MIC _ My Ideal City

the energy consumption in developed Countries is spent on transportation (both of passengers and freights); densely
populated areas represent very difficult transportation cases as a vast number of people needs to be transferred in a
restricted environment. However, studies carried out at both the global scale [Newman and Kenworthy, 1989] and the
local scale [Naess, 1993] shows how, increasing urban densities reduce the consumption of fuel related to transport.
This correlation is mainly due to the increased availability of public transportation (that are efficient only in the presence
of sufficiently aggregated demand) and the shortening of the average distances to be travelled in daily commuting if
compared with low density urban areas.
The energy efficiency of transport is also actively promoted by City councils through urban policies such as restricted
traffic areas and parking tolls that have the objective to encourage the use of mass transit systems, also in the view of
reducing the congestion of the road network.
There are a lot of other initiatives that are targeted to the reduction of the energy dependance of a city, including some
measures aimed at enhancing the on-site energy generation through the exploitation of sun, wind and geothermal heat.
However, all those measures tend to produce negligible results when compared to the high energy needs of the city, and
they are barely sufficient to provide enough power to the building they are built on.
However, the attention of the public and of the political bodies is almost entirely focussed on the energy consumption of
the city during its daily life, and particularly on its energy-intensive features.

2. The energy OF the city, the energy FOR the city

In fact, alongside the entire life of some objects, energy is needed for their functioning or use. Of course, there are some
objects (no matter if they are large or small) whose use don't imply any energy consumption, such as a monument, a
bench or a fork. Still, everybody agrees on the fact that the society should reduce its own energy needs, since they
appear to be unsustainable. On the contrary, very little attention is paid to another important share of energy
consumption represented by the energy that is employed by the production and transformation of every tool or service
that we need. Indeed, its difficult to deny that everything requires energy to be produced, except for the natural elements
that are used where they grow spontaneously. In fact, even though men don't need to input any energy on naturallygrown plants or on natural elements such as sand or stones, energy is required for harvesting or excavation and for all
the following steps prior to the final use.
As such, everything that is needed by a city requires energy (since, as stated before, a city is unable to produce anything
that is necessary for its inhabitants) for its production, transportation and marketing and energy is incorporated into each
product along its own productive process. Such energy is called embodied energy. Many definitions exist for the idea of
embodied energy. It can be defined as the total primary energy consumed over a product life cycle (...) Ideally the
boundaries would be set from the extraction of raw materials until the end of the products lifetime [Hammond and
Jones, 2008] or as a measure of the total energy consumed by a product during its life or complete life cycle. It includes
all the energy used during mining or milling the raw materials, manufacturing the raw materials into a product,
transporting the product, and installing the product, as well as finally removing or recycling the product by the American
Institute of Architects. Dozens of definition can be found in the literature. However, there's a general consensus that the

294

MIC _ My Ideal City

most complete describes embodied energy as the direct energy purchased to support the (production) process under
consideration, plus the indirect energy embodied in the inputs to the process [Fay et al., 2000].
Such definition underlines three important aspects:
a- the embodied energy content of a product is formed only by the energy inputted into its production process and in its
own inputs. The addition goes up until the specific moment of the analysis, thus it excludes the energy needed for
downstream activities (i.e. energy needed for demolition or recycle);
b- it includes only the energy purchased (with money) by an external energy provider without accounting for the energy
eventually produced on-site or the energy naturally provided by the Sun);
c- all energy inputs of the process are considered, including those needed for products or services required by the
production process itself, as agreed by Costanza [Costanza, 1980].
If one would esteem the magnitude of embodied energy just on the basis of the research activity on the topic, he would
say that it's importance is minimal if compared to the huge research activity carried out on running consumption or endof life energy. On the contrary, its importance deserves a completely different approach and a more comprehensive
research activity.

2. The importance of embodied energy

The amount of energy embodied in a product, for instance a building or an infrastructure, becomes an important
parameter of its sustainability when it assessed against its expected lifecycle, especially if the case that the latter is
limited if compared with the amount of energy used during its manufacturing process. For example, public buildings
monuments or religious signs are usually meant to last for a very long period of time, as they represent the public
institution that built them with public founds. In this case, there is probably no point to asses the embodied energy of
something that is designed to last many centuries. On the contrary, it's probably worth the effort to calculate the
embodied energy of a plastic glass: is it more sustainable to use disposable glasses or to spend energy in cleaning
reusable glasses? Is it more energy efficient to ride a 30 years old car or to change it every few years to keep it updated
with the latest engine solutions? The relationship between embodied energy and energy consumption throughout the life
span of a product is called Life Cycle Energy Assessment (LCEA) and this procedure can be applied to every kind of
product, including buildings.
In general, the most advanced studies on building sustainability and on LCEA have been conducted in Countries such
as Australia, New Zealand and North America. The research experiences developed in such regions over the past two
decades have strongly influenced the scientific community internationally, defining both the methodology and creating a
general consensus on the results of LCEA studies as well. According to the results of such studies the embodied energy
seems to have a modest impact on the LCEA of a building against the predominance of its energy consumption. Is it
possible to consider such results a general rule? Most LCEA analysis are carried out on common residential buildings
which represent the vast majority of a city building stock. It is important to note that such Countries share the use of

295

MIC _ My Ideal City

particular building technologies that are hardly found in european Countries, especially in the southern regions. For
instance, the Building Industry Advisory Council of New Zealand (BIAC) describes the prevalent building as built with a
light-weight timber framed technology entirely formed by wood elements with single glazed aluminium framed
windows. The building technology described doesn't reach the standards of european dwellings and it doesn't even meet
the building codes in some Countries neither. Also, the high mass version of the BIAC building presented in
Mithraratne and Vale's study on the LCEA of New Zealand Houses [Mithraratne and Vale, 2010] is far from european
standards, as it just features a concrete slab in lieu of the wooden floor used in standard constructions in New Zealand.
Also the dwelling described by [Fay et al. , 2000] in Australia, though it presents a more solid construction, is still very
different from the Mediterranean building practice and the same happens to the buildings presented for Canada in
[Trusty and Meil, 1999].
Similar construction technologies can be found in north european Countries too, as demonstrated by several studies
carried out in Belgium [Verbeeck and Hens, 2010] or Sweden [Adalberth, 1996]. A literature survey [Sartori and Hestnes,
2006] examines 60 LCA analysis found in peer reviewed academic journals: such 60 case studies cover only 9
Countries, none representing the south of Europe.
Mediterranean cities are generally more densely populated than those that can be found in other geographic regions.
Also, mediterranean Countries have developed a different tradition in terms of construction technology and the use of
wood is not as diffused as elsewhere. In addition, while thermal insulation is somehow sufficient to cope with cold
climates, warm conditions require the use of heavy materials, so as to increase the thermal inertia of the building's
envelope. This brought Mediterranean cities to a broad use of stone and, in more recent times, to the extensive adoption
of concrete or bricks as building materials.
Such materials, that are also used for the construction of public buildings and infrastructures are much heavier and have
an higher embodied energy content than light and natural materials such as timber elements or sandwich panels.
For this reason, an in depth analysis of the embodied energy content of buildings in mediterranean regions is needed as
the final value of embodied energy of buildings is likely to be much higher than that of buildings erected with construction
technologies that can be found in northern regions.
As a consequence, the topic of embodied energy deserves a much higher attention in Europe and especially in the
definition of the policies to be adopted in its souther regions.
Also from the point of view of infrastructural planning more attention needs to be paid on this topic. There's a very vivid
debate on the sustainability of transport infrastructures with trains often regarded as the greenest means of mobility.
However, it has to be considered that trains have a very complex infrastructure. In case of high-speed railway (as those
usually employed to connect major cities), the total energy consumption of the vehicles doesn't equal the embodied
energy of the infrastructure, not even on a 50-year lifecycle. The case is different for road traffic, where the incremental
energy consumption of vehicles becomes more and more important and it surpasses the embodied energy of the
infrastructure after 15-17 years. This means that, especially in the case of rail transport, there's not too much need to
work on the energy efficiency of the trains, while it's more important to focus on a more attentive design of the
infrastructure to make it simpler and less energy intensive.

296

MIC _ My Ideal City

Conclusions
Energy consumption is an important aspect of our life and the stability of our society lays on the easy and cheap
availability of energy. Deep modification of our habits occurred in the recent history when the scarcity of energy had a
negative impact on its price, both caused by conflicts (as in 1974 or during the first Iraqui War) or by other politic and
economic circumstances (as it happened in 2007 and 2008)
With the fast development of new economies, a number of people that has never been experienced before is asking
increasing amounts of energy to satisfy its meliorated lifestyle. The trading rules say that if the demand is not comforted
by an adequate supply, of any good, the price of that good rises.
European countries, that have little accessibility to fossil fuels, will have to cope with higher energy fares, that will
negatively affect their own economy, if they are not able do cut their energy need (or to provide energy through other
energy sources).
Europe developed in the past 3 decades a comprehensive set of measures and norms that are meant to decrease the
energy intensity of our actions, without affecting our lifestyle. As a consequence, we have already achieved a good level
of energy efficiency and we can pay more attention to the embodied energy of the products we use.
Now is time to develop and spread the knowledge that is necessary to take an informed choice when we select a
building material or two interchangeable products, considering their embodied energy at the same the of other technical
characteristics.

References
ADALBERTH K., Energy use during the life cycle of single-unit dwellings: examples, in Building and Environment vol 32,
1997, p. 3219.
COSTANZA R., Embodied energy and Economic Valuation, in Science vol. 210, 1980, p. 1219-1224.
FAY R., TRELOAR G. , IYER-RANIGA U., Life-cycle energy analysis of buildings: a case study, in Building Research &
Information n 28, 2000, p. 31-41.
HAMMOND G., JONES C., Inventory of Carbon and Energy, University of Bath, 2008.
MITHRARATNE N.,VALE B., Life cycle analysis model for New Zealand houses, in Building and Environment 39, 2004,
p.483492.
NAESS P., Energy use for transport in 22 Nordic Towns, Report 2, Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional
Research, Oslo 1993.
NEWMAN P., KENWORTHY J., Cities and automobile dependence. An international Sourcebook, Gower Technical,
Vermont, USA, 1989.
NEWMAN P. W. G., Sustainability and cities: extending the metabolism model, in Landscape and Urban Planning vol.
44, 1999, p. 219-226.
SARTORI I., HESTNES A. G., Energy use in the life cycle of conventional and low-energy buildings: A review article, in
Energy and Buildings vol.39, 2007, p. 249257.
TRUSTY W.B., MEIL J.K., Building Life Cycle Assessment: Residential Case Study, Athena Sustainable Materials
Institute, Canada, 1999.
VERBEECK G., HENS H., Life cycle inventory of buildings: A contribution analysis, in Building and Environment vol. 45,
2010, p. 964967.

297

MIC _ My Ideal City

Fostering resilient cities: from centralized to distributed networks

hydropower systems
Guido Minucci, Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Architettura e Pianificazione (DIAP)
Lorenzo Chelleri, Universidad Autnoma de Barcelona (UAB), Departamento de Geografa

1. Efficiency, resilience and sustainability for the cities: trajectories and paradoxes
The Ecological Society of America launched in 2009 the program Planetary Stewardship for Global Sustainability
(Power and Chapin 2009). Supported from a consistent and recent literature (Rockstrm et al 2010; Reid et al 2010, and
others) this program emphasized the growing concern upon the identification and evaluation of planetary safety
boundaries, inside which humanity should stay in order to avoid dangerous (but possible) global shocks or regime shifts
(Rockstrm et al 2009). Cities play a key role on that (Andersson, 2006) as the human dominated systems are
considered the main responsible of such global diffuse impacts on nature (Folke and Grunderson, 2010). Furthermore,
as Miller points out, globalized economy lifestyle is increasingly disconnecting people from nature, and the resources
that supports them (Miller 2005). Such artificiality of life and cities are well expressed within the so called 'resort city'
(Koolhaas, 2006), such as Dubai or Singapore, where the demand for leisure dictates the form, consumption and
essence of the city, without any connections to the sustainability dimensions. Increasing evidences are than calling for
such new frameworks, in acting now and with urgency, changing urban models and philosophy. Although the global
urban population surpassing the rural one (UN, 2008) cities occupy just the 2%t of the worlds terrestrial surface, but
consuming over 75% of its natural resources (UN-Habitat, 2006). This could seem a paradox if we notice that the most
energy (than resources) consumers societies (and cities) are in the developed contries, in other words the onces who
boast an evolution following efficiency paths. Nothing new if we consider what since XX century Jevons and others
began to explain within the theories on efficiency and technological improvements (Jevons, 1905) that efficiency is the
main cause of increasing production and consumption (Hotelling, 1931; Brookes,1979; Lovins, 1988; Saunders ,1992;
Schipper and Grubb, 2000; Binswanger, 2001 and Alcott, 2004). At this point sustainability is not a consequent path of
the technological and efficiency development, although a matter of controlling growth and production (Schneider and all
2010). The fact our societal structure are based and organize around a dynamic of production and consumption
(Castells, 2000) the transitions to different models pass throughout the call for more resilient, less efficiency oriented
cities and societies1. In fact resilience framework represents here the alternative path of the efficiency one, in developing
and looking at a more adaptive, flexible and long term sustainable trajectory.

This evidence is built on the empirical assumption that Climate Plans, as national and international programs coping with environmental crises or
Climate Change use this concept to promote sustainable adaptation to the forecasted impacts that threaten societies.

298

MIC _ My Ideal City

However, resilience could be a misleading concepts, mainly when and if applied to cities (Redman and Kizing, 2003;
Chelleri 2011). In fact, if from the ecological literature resilience seems to be quite well defined concept (Hollings, 1973,
1986) social and ecological scientists have developed this systems property in the more complex framework of socialecological systems (Folke, 1998; Berke et all 2003). But if look broadly into other disciplines resilience finds a definition
in psychological science, being the individual property and capacity to go ahead toward crises and shocks (Rutter,
1987), as far as the societies themselves could be resilient, following Adger definition of social resilience as the ability of
groups or communities to cope with external stresses and disturbances as a result of social, political and environmental
changes (Adger, 2000:347). From all those fields resilience emerges as the ability and capacity of any system to
withstand changes (impacts-stresses) adapting itself and remaining functionally stable. But what does it means referred
to a city? And at the light of our previous consideration about transition, unsustainable patterns of efficient production
and consumptions?
In trying to address these questions we have to look further beyond the resilience definitions and learn from the concept
properties, that could be transfer from ecology (or social ecological systems) to cities to improve their resilience.
As mentioned before, one of the main property of resilience is the not efficient systemic organization and structure,
although a redundancy in the systems functions(Salt and Walker, 2006)., that fosters the system capacity to adapt
changing conditions (because of its elements expleting functions elasticity, complementary and with the possibility of one
functional group-element to substitute another in case of change) Another property strictly connected (and
complementary) to redundancy is connectivity. Thanks to systems cross-scales interconnections and influences,
connectiveness is a key factor to remain stable coping with changes at any spatial or temporal level. So if were trying to
define a resilient city, surely connectiveness of its elements and their redundancy are two properties that the system
(city) should clearly look at. Such assumptions are not coming only from (ecological and social-ecological) resilience
literatures, at the same time recent terroristic-war versus natural disaster literatures (for example Krner, 2000) confirm
the tendency in turning the attention specifically to consider spatial and territorial aspects of resilience in local and
regional development and planning (Hill et al., 2008). Indeed, and mainly from 9/11, urban resilience seems to have
worked hand in hand with urban security paradigms (Chernick, 2005). In fact one of the main vulnerability of the city
consists in its vital elements survival (like water and energy production and distribution networks, or its business centres
etc) and in this case its easy to understand that the more city functions (physical elements) will be spatially sprawled
(and not concerted all in one place) the more the city vital elements are saved from possible breakdown (or attacks). As
mentioned before, the redundancy of the systems functional elements confers robustness to the system, which
resilience is expressed toward patterns of their connectivity. Those concepts are also emerging from technology studies,
where since the 1964 Baran introduced the concept of network resilience (Baran, 1964) determining it from the energy
production structure configuration. The more centralized networks are (one source of production) the more vulnerable,
because the social (and city) dependence only from it. In fact decentralized options (set of sources networking) or
distributed (nonhierarchical mesh) are resulting the less vulnerable due to the less probable and possible failurecrackdown or attacks than a centralized one.
Definitely, as the production and energy consumption are at the core of our cities and societies (Alanne, 2006), we
decided to focus on such a paradigm of resilience, analyzing the potentiality of the transition from centralized to
decentralized energy networks and building so the resilient premises starting from the physical structure of the energy
299

MIC _ My Ideal City

production and distribution network in cities. From this assumption and proposal, a whole resilience perspective in cities
emerges as a necessary transition toward a less vulnerable and more sustainable development patterns. That means
translating from other fields as social, political and economical sciences, these properties of resilience trying to define
what a resilient city should look like.

2. From Centralized to Small hydropower plants (SHP) : toward a more resilient territories
and cities structure
Electrical power systems have been traditionally designed in a centralized way, which means taking energy from highvoltage levels, and distributing it to lower voltage level networks. These are large generation units connected to
transmission networks, with central coordination of control (Bayod-Rujula, 2009). Over the years, the improvement in the
efficiency in transportating electricity over longer distances allowed growing economies of scale in the production and a
consequent increasing power outputs of the generation units (determined the construction of massive and centralized
electricity systems). As underlined by Bouffard and Kirschen (2008) those systems are highly vulnerable not only
because of: the depletion of fossil fuel and climate change impacts, the ageing of a highly complex infrastructure, the
insecurities affecting energy transportation infrastructure or with respect to terrorist threats and to natural disasters (as in
the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or the recent and dramatic earthquake in Japan in 2011). All those elements
are reducing the attractiveness of these centralized systems On the other hand, in the last decade, technological
innovations and a changing economic and regulatory environment have resulted in a renewed interest for distributed
electricity generation (DG). This trend is confirmed by the IEA (2002), who lists five major factors that contribute to this
evolution, i.e. developments in distributed generation technologies, constraints on the construction of new transmission
lines, increased customer demand for highly reliable electricity, the electricity market liberalisation and concerns about
climate change. DGs are modular, small systems that can be combined with the management and storage energy
systems in order to improve the operation of the distribution system (Bayod-Rujula, 2009). Thus, the shift from a
centralized system characterized by a few centrally energy sources to another one based on smaller-scale and local
sources will help security of supply through using more energy sources increasing equity and further the penetration of
renewable energy sources in the energetic production.
In this context, hydroelectric power plays an important role, although if overexploited within centralized philosophy it
could lead to devastating losses of landscapes and essential ecosystem services. Notwithstanding those impacts, today
hydropower is currently being used to generate electricity in 150 countries which last year utilized 11,000 power stations
to generate 3.270 TWh of electricity, which represented over 16% of global electricity generation
(BP 2010; IHA 2010), and nearly 80% of global renewable electricity capacity (REN21, 2010). As well at the EU scale,
hydropower is one of the main energy provider accounting for 63% of the electricity generated from renewable energy
sources in Europe or 10% of the total electricity production in the EU-27 (SETIS, 2008). Nonetheless, during the 20th
century, the development of small power plants have been marginalized in favour of the creation of large hydropower
schemes (more than 45.000 dams, in operation worldwide in over 140 countries, around 33.000 are large dams (WCD,
2000; ICOLD, 2009), but only 25% are involved in producing hydropower (UNESCO, 2006)), making water available for
energy generation, domestic use, food production, and flood control. Nevertheless, and as mentioned before, to secure
those benefits associated to large dams, in various cases unacceptable costs have been paid in social and
300

MIC _ My Ideal City

environmental terms, by people displaced and by various impacts on affected communities, by wetlands, and deltas
(Minoia and Brusarosco, 2006). Nowadays, two different scenarios are being identified. On one hand, the developed
countries (particularly Europe), where the hydropower has been harnessed to a great extent, it will continue to play a
crucial role, but in the integration within other renewable energy sources by providing reserve( WEC, 2010; SETIS, 2011)
and while experiencing a slight decrease (mainly thanks to the application of the EU Water Framework Directive
implementation). On the other hand, there is considerable potential for developing countries, where hydropower is
already a dominant in electricity production, even if ecologically unsustainable in many cases. The potential that still
remains economically exploitable is huge (UNESCO, 2003) and the bulk of new hydro power projects is likely to take
place in China, India and South America (IHA 2010). Moreve,r in the majority of these regions, the main problem
currently is the lack of financial means. This is the point that could foster the development toward new and small hydro
plant, mainly to satisfythe needs of rural and peripheral areas.

3. Definitions and worldwide examples: building resilience in practice

Nowadays there is still no consensus in the literature about the definition for what is a small hydropower plant and the
most common critirea in defining it deal with its output. UNIPEDE (International Union of Producers and Suppliers of
Electricity), the European Commision, ESHA (European Small Hydropower Association) as well as several other
members countries have also defined a scheme of less than 10 MW as being small. Italy for example fixed this limit at 3
MW, the UK at 5 MW and France at 8 MW (Jorss, 2003). Small hydropower generally uses run of river schemes,
generating ribbon energy. The weir serves only to maintain a minimum level for the water intake, but does not allow
storage. Hence, it means that these schemes are very dependent on the hydrologic condition of the river or stream. In
addition, there could be a mismatch of power. In other words, the peak power demand could be available during a
season whereas the peak power demand occurs during another one, and consequently the unavailability of power can
be quite serious (Cleveland, 2009). One more disadvantage is related to the fact that economy of scale does not prevail
(Cleveland, 2009). Despite that, with power plants using natural sites, small hydropower also has been growing in certain
alternative areas, where it is possible to take advantage of hydraulic energy that would otherwise be dissipated. This
may be the case in drinking water networks, raw or treated wastewater networks, rain water networks and irrigation
networks, or in certain industrial process, such as desalination of seawater (Sabonnadire, 2007). In addition, it has
been notated that in developing nations SHP becomes the catalyst for the development of small manufacturing facilities.
One case in point is electrolytic manufacturing of fertilizer. Further, small-scale hydro schemes can make a useful
contribution to rural electrification strategies, presenting a suitable alternative to decentralized diesel generation,
particularly where fuel supply is a problem (UNESCO, 2006). Herewith indeed we have taken some worldwide built
examples and intervention using SHP in order to analyze them for implementation purposes and not only the theoretical
argumentation and definition of the tool.

301

MIC _ My Ideal City

3.1. Supporting transition in Cottbus (Germany)

Cottbus, with a population of 108,000, is the main city in the Basse-Lusace region. Even though the fabric of the regional
economy has long been known for its textile industry as well as underground lignite mining, Cottbus has experienced a
transition housing nowadays several administrative centres and service-oriented companies along with a university
campus specialized in science. In 1995, the municipality decided to build a "run-of-river" hydroelectric power plant next
to the old dam, with the aim of injecting the electricity produced into the local electricity network. This project comes
within the framework of the THERMIE programme and was subsidised by the European Commission within the context
of renewable energies. The hydroelectric facility (Table 1) produces up to 2,500 MWh per year, equal to the consumption
of 650 households. It stops atmospheric emissions of 2,000 tons of CO2, 14.2 tons of SO2, 5.6 tons of NOx, 1.8 tons of
CO as well as 360 kg of ash compared to fossil fuel combustion (EnergyCities, 2002).

Table 1. SHP of Cottbus

3.2. The Rural Development of China case

In China, primary energy sources include the coal, petroleum, natural gas, nuclear and other renewable energy sources
(e.g. wind, solar, biomass and geothermal energy) from which hydropower only occupies less than the 7% of the energy
production and consumption. This is incommensurate with the fact that hydro resources account for about 36.5% of the
remained recoverable reserves of primary energy (others are: coal 58.8%, petroleum 3.4%, natural gas 1.3%)
(Fengshan, 2005; The National Development and Reform Committee, 2008). Nerverthelss, China has the highest level
of hydropower development activity in the world (UN, 2002). In this context, preferential policies, indigenous
manufacturing capabilities, recognition of the advantages of small hydropower plant over large hydropower are at the
base of the success of the SHP in China. SHP now accounts for more than 30 percent of China's overall hydropower
capacity (Table 2) and approximately one half of all commissioned SHP plants worldwide are located in China (Huang
and Yan, 2009). The majority of the recent development focusing on rural electrification has been located in the
302

MIC _ My Ideal City

southeast and southwest of the country. Nearly half of China's SHP generators are linked to local mini-grids (especially
in mountainous areas), while only 10% are connected to the national grid. The construction of SHP-based local grids to
serve specific rural supply system developed by China, where the population and the load are sparsely distributed, and
the large grid is far from reaching and thus not economically feasible. There are two types of SHP station: those
invested, owned and managed by local government, which were 19.2% in 2001, and small independent Power
Producers (IPPs) developed with private investment , which were 80.8% in 2001 (Jianda and Xiaozhang, 2004;
UNESCO, 2006).

Table 2. Accounted and estimated energy in China

3.3. Evolution and implementation of SHP in Turkey

Development of small hydropower began in 1902 in Turkey. Since that time, several SHP have been installed by
different subjects (government organization, private sector, and local municipalities) widely in the country (Hepbasl et
al., 2001; Demirbas, 2002). At the end of 2002, 70 SHPs projects (installed capacity less than 10 MW) have put in
operation and 203 SHP projects (installed capacity less than 10 MW) have been developed at various stages in Turkey
(BAKIS and DEMIRBAS, 2004). During the last two decades, around 85% of all small hydropower plants have been
recently constructed and of these approximately 20% of generating capacity of SHEP plants is in private hands.
According to their gross head the percentage of SHEP plants is as follows: Low head (up to 5 m) - 0%; Medium head
(5e15 m) - 5% and High head (more than 15 m) - 95%. High head SHEP plants are mostly used in Turkey (Balat, 2007).
In Turkey In 2001 the Electricity Market Regulatory Authority was established and as consequence of this, the private
sector has been registered as a legal entity and hence it has the right to obtain a license granted from this authority in
order to build and operate power plants. Further, in 2005, with the publication of the Renewable Energy Law Turkish
government assured to buy electricity from legal entities with a price of 5.5 Vcent/kWh for 10 years. Besides, 85%
discount is applied for forest and land acquisition to build SHEP plants. Nowadays, in this context, Small hydro
contributes 0.52% to the electricity mix in Turkey but total hydro contribution is around 34% of the total electricity
generation. Small hydro and total hydro contribution in the renewable energy-based electricity production is dominant in
Turkey (2% and 97.7%, respectively) (Balat, 2007).
303

MIC _ My Ideal City

4.

Conclusion

New circumstances with regard to diverse issues, such as economy, security, environment and climate change seem to
support, to define the right conditions for a switch from a centralized system to a distributive one. In other words,
nowadays, through the definition of a new equilibrium between these two different power systems, which are usually
considered to be in conflict each other, a better integration between those can be achieved in order to develop cities and
communities more resilient and less vulnerable. Consequently, we have tried to translate in practical terms some
paradigm of resilience thinking, following the redundancy and connection principles and dealing so, in the energy sector
within the network structures, some examples of transition toward a more sustainable and resilient development. The
SHP technically represent not an advance in term of increasing efficiency but a change in paradigm, an adaptation
toward a transition from centralized to decentralized networks, that decrease the systemic vulnerability and promote a
more equal production and distribution of energy. Furthermore, in doing that SHP allows to reduce the greenhouse gas
emissions and to reduce transmission losses, assists in the maintenance of river basins by allowing the recovery of
floating waste from the river, the monitoring of hydrological indicators and the refurbishment of old SHP plants.

References
BALAT H., A renewable perspective for sustainable energy development in Turkey: the case of small hydropower plants,
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews11:2152e65, 2007.
BP, Statistical review of world energy, 2010.
CLEVELAND C. J., Concise Encyclopaedia of the History of Energy, Elsevier, San Diego, 2009.
ENERGYCITIES, Mini-hydroelectric plant in Cottbus, 2002
www.managenergy.net/resources/79
FENGSHAN H., Almanac of Chinas water power-2005, Beijing, China Electric Power Press 2007.
HUANG H., YAN Z., Present situation and future prospect of hydropower in China, Renewable and Sustainable Energy
Reviews, vol. 13, pp. 1652-1656, 2009.
International Hydropower Association (IHA), Activity Report, 2010.
INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION ON LARGE DAMS (ICOLD), World Register of Dams, 2009.
JIANDA Z., Xiaozhang Z., Private Participation in Small Hydropower Development in China - Comparison with
International Communities, UNHYDRO Conference, Beijing, 2004.
JORSS W., Decentralized power generation in the liberalised EU Energy Markets, Springer, Verlag Berlin Heidelberg,
2003.
REN21, Renewables 2010 Global Status Report, 2010.
PFENNINGER S., Renewable electricity in the EU: the road to 2020, IIASA, 2008.
http://www.sefep.eu/documents/renewable-overview/the-current-state-of-renewable-electricity-in-theeu/files/EU%20Renewables%202020.pdf
SABBONADIERE J. (ed.), Renewable energy sources, ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2009.
SETIS, Hydropower: Technology Information Sheet, 2011.
TJAROKO T. S., LECKSCHEIDT J., Mini and Small Hydropower in Europe, GRIPP Knowledge Centre, 2003.
http://www.ec-asean-greenippnetwork.net/dsp_page.cfm?view=page&select=145
THE NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND REFORM COMMITTEE, THE PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF CHINA. The Eleventh
Five-year Plan of Renewable Energy Source Development. Beijing, China; 2008.
UN, Water for people, water for life, UNESCO and Berghahn Books, Barcelona, 2002.
UNESCO, Water: a shared responsibility, UNESCO and Berghahn Books, Barcelona, 2006.
WORLD COMMISSION ON DAMS (WCD), Dams and development - A new framework for decision-making, 2000.
WORLD ENERGY COUNCIL (WEC), Water for Energy, 2010.
POWER, M. E., CHAPIN, F. S., III Planetary stewardship. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 7(8):399, 2009.
ROCKSTRM J., STEFFEN W., NOONE K., PERSSON A., CHAPIN FS. 3RD, LAMBIN EF., LENTON TM., SCHEFFER
304

MIC _ My Ideal City

M., FOLKE C., SCHELLNHUBER HJ., NYKVIST B., DE WIT CA., HUGHES T., VAN DER LEEUW S., RODHE H.,
SRLIN S., SNYDER P.K, COSTANZA R., SVEDIN U., FALKENMARK M., KARLBERG L., CORELL RW., FABRY VJ.,
HANSEN .J, WALKER B., LIVERMAN D., RICHARDSON K., CRUTZEN P., FOLEY JA. A safe operating space for
humanity. Nature 24; 461(7263): 472-5, 2009.
ROCKSTRM, J., L. KARLBERG, The quadruple squeeze: Defining the safe operating space for freshwater use to
achieve a triply green revolution in the Anthropocene. Ambio, 39(3): 257-265, 2010.
REID WV., CHEN D., GOLDFARB L., HACKMANN H., LEE YT., MOKHELE K., OSTROM E., RAIVIO K., ROCKSTRM
J., SCHELLNHUBER HJ., WHYTE A., Environment and Development. Earth system science for global sustainability:
grand challenges, Science 12; 330(6006): 916-7, 2010.
ANDERSSON E., Urban landscapes and sustainable cities. Ecology and Society 11(1): 34, 2006.
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss1/art34/
FOLKE C., CARPENTER S., WALKER B., SCHEFFER M., CHAPIN T., ROCKSTRM J., Resilience thinking:
integrating resilience, adaptability and transformability. Ecology and Society 15(4): 20, 2010,
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/art20/
MILLER J.R., Biodiversity conservation and the extinction of experience, Trends in Ecology & Evolution 20: 430434,
2005.
KOOLHAAS R., CABE, Ubiqus Reporting, 2006.
UN-Habitat, State of the Worlds Cities 2006/2007, Earthscan, 2006.
United Nations (UN), World Urbanization Prospects 2007, Revision, New York, 2008.
Chelleri L. (in press) Resilience perspectives and the city: paradoxes and synergies. DAG journal, 57: 36-49.
HOLLING C.S., Resilience and stability of ecological systems, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4:1-23,
1973.
HOLLING C.S., The resilience of terrestrial ecosystems: local surprise and global change. In CLARK W.C., MUNN R.E.,
(ed.), Sustainable development of the biosphere. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 292317, 1986.
FOLKE C., BERKES F., Linking Social and Ecological Systems: Management Practices and Social Mechanisms for
Building Resilience, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
BERKES F., COLDING J., FOLKE C. (ed.), Navigating Social-ecological systems: Building resilience of complexity and
change, Cambridge University Press, 2003.
RUTTER, M., Psychosocial resilience and protective mechanism, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 57(3): 316-331,
1987.
ADGER N., Social and Ecological Resilience: Are They Related? Progress in Human Geography 24: 347-364, 2000.
WALKER B., SALT D., Resilient thinking. Sustaining Ecosystems and people in a changing world, Washington, DC:
Island Press, 2006.
KRNER, M. (ed.), Destruction and reconstruction of Towns : Destruction by Earthquakes, Fire and Water, Vol. 1., Bern,
Stuttgart and Wien , Verlag Paul Haupt, 2000.
HILL, E. W., WIAL H., WOLMAN H., Exploring Regional Economic Resilience. Working paper:4, Institue of urban and
regional development, Berkeley, University of California, 2008.
CHERNICK H., The resilient city: The Economic Impact of 9/11, New York: Russell Sage Foundation Publications,
2005.
BARAN, P., On distributed Communications: Introduction to Distributed Communication Network, Memorandum RM3420-PR, Santa Monica, California: RAND, 1964.
Ludwig, D., B. Walker, C. S. Holling., Sustainability, stability, and resilience, Conservation Ecology [online]1(1): 7, 1997
http://www.consecol.org/vol1/iss1/art7/
ALANNE, K., SAARI, A. Distributed energy generation and sustainable Development, Renewable and Sustainable
Energy Reviews 10: 539558, 2006.
ALCOTT, BLAKE, John Rae and Thorstein Veblen, Journal of Economic Issues 38 (3), 765 786, 2004.
BINSWANGER M., Technological progress and sustainable development: what about the rebound effect?, Ecological
Economics 36 (1), 119132, 2001.
BROOKES L., A low energy strategy for the UK. Atom 269, 7378, 1979.
CASTELLS M., Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society, British Journal of Sociology, 51(1):524,
2000.
HOTELLING, H., The economics of exhaustible resources, Journal of Political Economy 39 (2), 137175; in: DARNELL
A. C. (ed.), The Collected Economic Articles of Harold Hotelling. Springer-Verlag, New York, 1931.
JEVONS, W. S., in: FLUX A.W. (ed.), The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the
Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-mines, 3rd edition 1905, Augustus M. Kelley, New York. 1865/1965.
LOVINS A. B., Energy saving from more efficient appliances: another view, Energy Journal 9, 155162, 1988.
305

MIC _ My Ideal City

SAUNDERS H. D., The KhazzoomBrookes postulate and neoclassical growth, Energy Journal 13(4), 131148, 1992.
SCHIPPER L., GRUBB M., On the rebound? Feedbacks between energy intensities and energy uses in IEA countries,
Energy Policy 28 (6/7), 367 388, 2000.
Redman, C. L., Kinzig A. P., Resilience of past landscapes: resilience theory, society, and the longue dure.
Conservation Ecology 7(1): 14. 2003.
http://www.consecol.org/vol7/iss1/art14
Schneider F., Kallis G., Alier M., Crisis or opportunity? Economic degrowth for social equity and ecological sustainability.
Introduction to this special issue, Journal of Cleaner Production 18, 511518, 2010.

306

MIC _ My Ideal City

Energy Design
Luca Mazzaria, University of Genoa, Faculty of Architecture
Emanuele Sommarivaa, Doctoral School in Architecture and Industrial Design, University of Genoa

1. Energy and Environment

A new cultural revolution between sustainability and World Wide Energy Web
Exceeding the boundaries of the consolidated city and urban sprawl, especially in the last decades of the twentieth
century, gave a deep mark on the territories' organization, increasing interest on environment and landscape issues.
Charles Waldheim, professor and chair of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University, align these positions around
the Landscape Urbanism2, whose research is moving from the recycling of those human ecosystems and post-urban
territories, which can rebuild their identity only at the landscape's scale.
Nowadays, the growth of the metropolis is so rapid as to produce entirely unexpected conditions - new roles for the old
city center, new hybrid forms such as the urban spawl, new local ecologies - while the plans for big infrastructures, such
as those for the high speed train, are producing territorial networks that transform the political and economical
geography of large regions. The metropolisation process has grown to levels that in 2006, for the first time in history,
more than half the world's population lives in urban areas and is not a coincidence that on this image has been built the
Biennale of Architecture direct by Richard Burdett and Guido Martinotti.

Assignments: Luca Mazzari: par. 2; Emanuele Sommariva: par. 1.

D. SPENCER, 'Prassi e nuove direzioni del Landscape Urbanism', in Monograph.it, List Actar, Trento, 2010, n. 2.

307

MIC _ My Ideal City

Though the trend towards the concentration of large populations in dense urban conditions brigs back the debate to the
scale of architecture and public space, paying critical attention to the relations and the movement of social, economical
and environmental issues, now more urgent than before.
The structural weaknesses of human ecosystems, especially in energy supplies, are closely related to the limits of
development of society. The energy issue becomes, therefore, not only the central node for the sustainable development
of local economies, but also coincides with the research for a renewed ecological balance and includes policies,
programs and systemic approaches, completely different from current ones.
Not surprisingly, the energy intake to maintain in balance a physical ecosystem is particularly significant and
indispensable in high anthropized territories. Indeed, as argued by Alan Weisman in his book 'The world without us', if
man won't be present, these sites will break down quickly. Entire cities, neighborhoods, or suburban areas would be
invaded by a wild nature, and after some time, will begin their progressive destruction. Therefore, we can't imagine the
development of any sector without an adequate supply of energy and resources (natural, tangible, intangible), although
the point is not to define the quantity, but the directions of growth. The issues of the growth, the development of society
and the preservation of landscape and environmental resources has become so important that the reversal of the global
economic system, now largely based on exclusively use of fossil resources, requires a strong political will and forms of
incentives by local communities.
If the Web has caused the loss of meaning to the concept of physical distance and distorted the notion of territory, as
stated by the geographer Franco Farinelli, shaking even the principles of urban design, so the technologies that have
revolutionized the computers' world will be useful to reconfigure the Earth's energy web. Also the well-known economist
Jeremy Rifkin, professor at Berkeley University and author of numerous essays, shares this view, pointing out that the
creation of a renewable energy system, partially stored in the form of hydrogen, and distributed through intelligent smartgrids, opens the door to a Third Industrial Revolution ....
Produce electricity does not mean, therefore, only move equipments, heat and light a house, but also and above all, to
extend new forms of communication and distribution, as proposed in the theory of Worldwide Energy Web3, opening the
connection to millions of people and involving them, at the same time, into social and spatial transformations that can
significantly affect our lifestyles. The dramatic civil wars in the south Mediterranean countries, the environmental collapse
of the Gulf of Mexico and the Tsunami in Japan, as well as unequal access to energy sources for most of the world's
population, are the result of the ineffectiveness of traditional energy policies derived from fossil sources. Today we have
the opportunity to go beyond the existing paradigms: achieving a new economic model, in which everyone has the
opportunity and the responsibility to create its own energy and distribute it through a similar internet web system. This is
not utopia, but a necessity that will affect all of us.
In this multi-scale scenario, from the territory to the metropolitan areas, from the suburbs to the city centers, from the
Cultural Heritage to the social housings, the use of renewable energy determines the need to define new criteria and
concepts in which architecture is the leading sector. In the same way, the design of advanced technology solutions and
systems that can capture and preserve energy, must aim the maximum integration, through qualified and efficient
working groups. From these assumptions are moving the theories developed by the bio-architecture, although its

J. RIFKIN, 'Economia allidrogeno: il Worldwide Energy Web e la redistribuzione del potere sulla Terra', Mondadori, Milano 2003.

308

MIC _ My Ideal City

operational status, especially in terms of definitions, still appears too large to establish clear methodological lines. The
sustainable building, as Ugo Sasso outlined in the 'European Manual of bio-architecture', is due to three trends now
operating, each of which focuses on different aspects of the ecosystem: the flows, places and actors:4

The Ecological Quality's line deals with the flows system and how energy, water, materials, transport, waste can
be integrated and transformed into closed life cycle system in relation to quality of global solutions;

The Eco-program's line works on the project sites' theme, in order to deal with planning in a multi-scale
approach, from the territory to the architecture, with the aim of investigating the space's quality;

The Social Sustainability's line deals with the actors, who have a role in the transformation process, the
designers and the people involved: general contractors, planners, architects, companies and son on. In this
case the goal is to investigate the process' quality.

Figure 1. Sustainable building's Framework

In other words, if the way we consider the buildings has changed, while the bionomial of energy's production preservation for the indoor comfort has become a main issue of contemporary design, this will lead to new meanings and
languages, in which architecture and design shall constitute a single body.
Define strategies and products as much as possible shared between designers, government agencies - both
administrative and responsible for the protection of architecture and landscape - companies, universities and citizens, is
the process necessary to promote and implement the use of new technologies in complex and anthropized territories.
So, the self-production of electricity through the use of renewable energy helps not only to ensure an easier and
democratic access to the energy, but also eliminates the international conflicts for its appropriation.

U. SASSO, 'Citt-Territorio. Parametri di Sostenibilit', in 'Nuovo Manuale Europeo di Bioarchitettura', AA.VV. (by) U. Sasso, Gruppo Mancuso
Editore, Roma, 2007.
4

309

MIC _ My Ideal City

2. Energy and Architecture

Tools and languages for a widespread production
The scientific research, with a vast literature in support, underlines that in order to capture the energy distributed over
the entire Earth's surface, as well as that from the sun or the winds, the most efficient and fastest way is the use of
architecture. The story of building, over the centuries and in different civilizations, shows many practices and concepts
that have always characterized the architecture as a form of analysis of different contexts, from the morphological
issues to the environmental and climate ones. It's from these contextual factors and the the kind of ecological response
that you can define whether an intervention can be described only for its aesthetic and formal features or for its
landscape's sensivity - in particular referring to the definition adopted by the European Landscape Convention. In this
way, both the territorial actions, in order to guide the urban strategies of the XXI century's city and to overcome the
traditional way of planning, as well as the contemporary design must be rethought. The point is not exclusively linked to
the technological level available for a society. A document that should make us think about the Planet's present condition
in relation to the global economic system, is presented by the Global Footprint Network in the Living Planet Report
20105, which shows the large gap between North and South, fully reversed compared the normal development indicators
(GDP above all). If the comparison between the ecological footprint and biological capacity provides the status of the
environmental situation of a country, the effects of progressive resources' consuption are clearly visible in the living
Planet's index of tropical regions and poorest countries, both decreased by 60% in the last thirty years.
Therefore, rethinking the project's nature also means designing tools and solutions that propose a concrete alternative to
the common practices, working on the contexts' quality in a multiscalar approach, prefiguring the spaces' nature from the
interactions between urban services, life styles and ways of production.

Figure 2. The relationship between different global Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity, calculated in Equivalent Planets

AA.VV., 'Living Planet - Report 2010', Global Footprint Network, OCSE - WWF International, UNEP-WCMC (World Conservation Monitoring
Centre), G. BOLOGNA (by) italian edition, Roma 2010. The full document can be downloaded at http://www.wwf.it/lpr2010.sh.
5

310

MIC _ My Ideal City

This is possible through the rediscovery of traditional building techniques which allow to reduce the energy used, for
example, to cool the buildings, combined with new ways to insulate both walls and windows in order to preserve a good
indoor micro-climate condition for a better living comfort.
Together with the integrated tools for energy's production from renewable sources like the sun (photovoltaic panels),
wind (mini turbines) and earth (biomass heating plant), these new paradigms of contemporary design define unusual and
new architectonical languages. If the way seams to be clear for new constructions, not so easy is the relationship with
the historical buildings under protection still far from a solution. However, the difficulties of having appropriate tools,
integrated and easy to apply in order to reduce energy's consumption on the existing buildings, appear clearly as well as
the application of Italian and European laws on the energetic certification of buildings, to meet the needs of energy selfproduction that more and more people around the world welcome. Most of the time, the adoption of these technologies is
determined by what the market offers, not always capable to create an adequate exchange of ideas and views between
designers and local communities. Vice versa, this generates the opposite effect: a brake on the spread of this solutions
beacause of their exclusive technical answer which doesn't take into account the aesthetic needs that accompany the
design itself. Nowadays, solar and photovoltaic panels as well as wind turbines are still sporadic appearances, but when
in the next few years, a continuous flow of products will redraw everyday the landscape of cities and territories, the need
for efficient products will be essential as well as their architectural integration6. In this sense, the design research can
significantly contribute to the solution of the new contemporary social and economical issues 7.
From this statement it follows that in the coming years, the demand on energetic design's themes will increase, or rather,
as well as the role of architecture. It follows that the thought and practice of energy design, extended to a variety of
social actors that forms large and complicated project networks, though distant and different from each other, through
skills and scientific experiences can provide coherent and specific answers. These relationships can increase the
production of ideas with which developping the future scientific reserch during the various steps of the project and,
depending on the different skills, generating not only new products, but also new approaches to the architectural design.
In other words, a changing World requires a lot of design tools built by and for many, developed from comparable
experiences, a knowledge that, once accumulated and transferred, present all the features of a full-research:

a research for the design (that produces new tools with which to design);

a research on the design (that creates a critical reflection on new procedures);

a research through the design (that produces visions and ideas, using the skills of a designer).

In defining new fields of research, methodologies and products, the mere presence of Universities and Industry is no
longer sufficient. It's necessary to build a new scenario in which the University could converse with the energy
companies itself, and be an active partner into the industrial reseach and production, in order to create itself a position of
institutional credibility and sharing the results of the research with the most advanced design studio, connected with the
local communities, the public administrations, the private companies, the business associations, and the citizens.

6
7

L. SIRAGUSA, 'Lenergia del sole e dellaria come generatrice di forme architettoniche', CLEUP, 2009.
N. LANTSCHNER, 'La mia CasaClima', Raetia, 2009.

311

MIC _ My Ideal City

In this new research horizon, energy design plays an important role, as well as the understanding between the various
Faculties: Architecture, in order to define new languages and forms of expression; Engineering, for the development of
new technologies to meet the diverse needs of energy production; Biology, to test the quality of the new designed
systems in relation to the Planet's ecosystems, as well as those of Geology, Chemistry, Physics. Moreover, the role that
the University must play, has a great ethical value, as well as providing tools and new design concepts, helping to
sensitize generations of students and faculty researchers, no longer marginalized from current global challenges, in
order to deal immediately with a new important vision of the project, rethinking it deeply, far from that technological
mannerisms which has pervaded the design studios in the last fifteen years.
In this sense, the energy design's research should communicate that, if the energy production from renewable sources
wants democratically to redistribute the power on Earth, shouldn't have the only objective on the mere production of
energy, but would be able to organize those social, economical and territorial issues, towards a truly sustainable vision
of life.

Figure 3. Interior bioclimatic systems of some old historic architecture (Iran - Windtowers and Matera - I Sassi)

312

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 4. The 'smart house', which combines passive isolation systems and energy production power plats from renewable sources

References
G. BATESON, 'Steps to an Ecology of Mind', University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1972.
N. E. ANDERSON, 'Ecologies of the Heart: Emotion Belief and the Environment', Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996.
M. DOUGLAS, 'Implicit Meanings: Selected Essays in Anthropology', Taylor & Francis Group, New York, 1999.
J. RIFKIN, 'Economia allidrogeno: il Worldwide Energy Web e la redistribuzione del potere sulla Terra', Mondadori,
Milano 2003.
U. SASSO, 'Citt-Territorio. Parametri di Sostenibilit', in 'Nuovo Manuale Europeo di Bioarchitettura', AA.VV. (by) U.
Sasso, Gruppo Mancuso Editore, Roma, 2007.
A. WEISMAN, 'Il mondo senza di noi', Einaudi, Torino, 2008.
D. MASI, 'Go Green, il nuovo trend della comunicazione', Ed. Fausto Lupetti, 2008.
L. SIRAGUSA, 'Lenergia del sole e dellaria come generatrice di forme architettoniche', CLEUP, 2009.
N. LANTSCHNER, 'La mia CasaClima', Raetia, 2009.
D. SPENCER, 'Prassi e nuove direzioni del Landscape Urbanism', in Monograph.it, List Actar, Trento, 2010, n. 2.

313

MIC _ My Ideal City

An identity for the sustainable city

Elisabetta Pero, Politecnico di Milano

1. Introduction
Whilst awareness grows that available land is not infinite and that low-density housing increases the need to commute
and consequently pollution, many people are leaving cities due to the excessively high costs of property, many areas of
contemporary cities are seen as unsafe and degraded and because they want to live in less built-up areas. Once they
have moved outside the city, they realise they are in places that are too isolated to attract and sustain services and
infrastructures to improve the quality of public areas and that these places are just as unsafe. They also have to drive
everywhere, meaning that roads into the city are congested.
This trend, which in a certain sense is anti-urban and pays little attention to soil consumption, coexists with a growth in
ecological awareness and regulations aimed at rating energy saving in buildings. There are many experimental areas
defined by residential criteria which apply technologies for passive energy saving, with the use of recyclable materials
and installations for solar energy and water recycling. The two trends, a traditional habitat with reassuring one-family
homes and a more experimental and urban one, co-exist, with a clear prevalence of the former. This contradiction is
present not only in the building sector but also on a more general level. The first aspect that I would like to examine in
this paper is the importance of a reflection on the contemporary city, to put sustainable architecture into a structural
context. In particular I would like to focus on the concepts of urbanity and duration of the building as factors that can
provide architectural direction to the debate on sustainability. The second aspect is based on the observation that if, on
the one hand, we can legitimately consider that the need to build homes using active and passive systems of energy
saving will be increasingly recognised, on the other hand it is difficult to understand the forms and density of this habitat.
These notes focus on the analysis of some characters of housing construction in Milan built in the 50-60 characterized
by several new factors still to understand and apply: the flexibility of the plants, the representativeness of the facade, the
dialogue with the context, the search of urbanity and the duration of the building.

2. The contemporary city. The search for the urban effect

In the recent past there has been the tendency to consider the development and the phenomenon of the dispersion of
the contemporary city as the natural growth of an autonomous organism. However, here we do not intend to acquire the
model of the dispersed city as an fact of our era that is incontrovertible or non-adjustable; that is, whilst being aware of
the complexity of the question which makes it even difficult to agree on the meaning to give to the scientific terms of the

314

MIC _ My Ideal City

question by town-planners and economists1, we intend to consider the dispersed city not as something new which is the
result of contemporary confusion and complexity or the abnormal result of speculative processes left to themselves2,
but rather it has to be evaluated as the outcome of processes controlled by ways other than planning.3
In his article entitled La strada dello spazio urbano Raffaele Pugliese synthetically describes the town plan covering
several municipalities of a collusive type that has linked Milan with its surrounding area, taking the principle of zoning as
a starting point. He maintains that on the one hand Milan in words took on the objective of confirming, on the
quantitative level, the large urban parameters (population and manufacturing activities), but in the facts denied the space
for this continuous presence but fomented, through the system of compatible functions, the creation of massive
quantities of services, accompanied by the entrenchment of a rapid and deleterious process of expelling the weakest
functions from the municipality. On the other hand, the towns in the surroundings, with town plans increasingly on a
broad scale, offered concrete spaces at a low cost for manufacturing site schemes, zoning schemes, schemes for trade
etc., opening up to the resettlement of the weakest functions (low-cost housing, small businesses and manufacturing,
mass retail trade) which zoning traditionally relegated to the fringes of cities.4.
The dispersed city is not, therefore, an autonomous organism that evolves according to its own internal rules, but it
represents the result of precise settlement policies from which the distances can be taken today in an attempt to orient
the development of the city. It is not, therefore, a casual evolution, but rather a causal one.5 Considering, for example the
so-called Po megalopolis which stretches from Turin to Venice, in addition to settlement policies, the following other
joint causes can be identified which give rise to the dispersed city in certain areas rather than in others: a network of
small and medium urban centres, with a historic layout; an exasperated process of occupation of the territory in these
cities both by the residential part and manufacturing activities and services; building in this territory is low-intensity and
low-density; the service activities are, as well as dispersed, of a dimension such as to serve large parts of the population
that has settled in the area. These services, moreover, have an urban and metropolitan connotation. Other joint causes:
overall this territory does not appear to be functionally specialized; the use that the inhabitants make of this territory is of
the urban type, i.e. it simultaneously leads an autonomous life (like a part of a city) but at the same time it is strongly
integrated with all the others; the use of the territory is made possible by a very high rate of mobility of the population,
therefore in the population in each of its parts and the population that uses that part of the territory there is no relation
or regularity; in time the territory tends to present some levels of social specialization.6
Essentially there would appear to be a certain convergence between the compact city and the dispersed city or at
least, an integration.
It is difficult to evaluate the quality of life in an area which by definition is extensive, a portion of territory that stretches
from Turin to Milan to the towns in the Veneto and Friuli regions on the one hand, from Turin to Bologna and Rimini on
the other. Eugenio Turri wonders whether the megalopolis has a heart. But the dispersed city, although it comes from

Michelangelo Savino Citt diffusa; reti; ambienti insediativi: la ricerca di una verosimile definizione dei processi di trasformazione del territorio.
In Territorio. Innovazione. Economia. Pianificazione. Politiche. Ventanni di ricerca del Daest edited by Francesco Indovina, Venice, 1999, p. 47.
2 R. Pugliese La strada dello spazio urbano in Le strade. Un progetto a molte dimensioni (edited by A.Moretti), Franco Angeli/DST, Milan, 1996.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid. p. 119.
5 Francesco Indovina, La citt diffusa: cos e come si governa in Territorio. Innovazione. Economia. Pianificazione. Politiche. Ventanni di ricerca
del Daest edited by Francesco Indovina, Venice, 1999, p. 47.
6 Ibid. p. 55.
1

315

MIC _ My Ideal City

mens desire for a city, the legacy in part of the rural condition of the past, ends up by being the indifferent city, the nonplace, the atopic or a-geographical geography, the non-city for which the bonds that count today are other than those
with an urban centre, the historical heart of the ancient and extraordinary cities of the Po valley, with their magical
squares dripping with humanity and history: they are increasingly places for the enjoyment of modernity, such as the
supermarket which stands outside the urban centre, the motorway toll station, the road that leads out of the city, where
the new services are concentrated: the market city, the car dealer, the discotheque, the sports ground, the railway
station, the airport. This requires daily use of a car, to which is linked the completeness and the extent of the road and
motorway blood circulation, the use of which makes us feel we are not only or no longer offspring of the city we belong to
even though we live in the dispersed city but also participants in a system of relations that the megalopolis has built up
according to newer models of living and production, induced by very recent development.7
What is absent from the megalopolis is the sense of living space with participation, an absence of spaces of identity.
Eugenio Turri again points out how it is necessary to restore life to symbolic places and spaces.
Orienting the diffused city would thus appear possible by identifying significant nodes by identity and density.

2.1 The urban potential of residence

At European level, there has been on-going reflection for some time on the search for the urban effect from actions
characterized by high residential density.
One of the greatest objectives of the current critical reflection on residence is to stimulate the renewal of residential
space, not only from the necessary reformulation spatial and technical of the constructed cell, but from the search for
new urban orders. Orders capable of effectively agreeing with new changing scenarios, where the idea of a recognizable
city, opposed to the territory outside the walls would have given way to the evidence of a new territorial urban reality on
other scales, not from the continuity of building, but from the force and neutrality of the great networks destined to
structure it.8 Particularly in Northern Europe, new residential forms linked to the new urban dynamics are being
experimented with and theorized. I would suggest considering the term of urban building to understand the problem in
all its complexity. Each urban settlement is liveable and ecological if the residence is a decisive part of the structure.
And, on the contrary, the residence enriched by the complexity of the urban functions, can become homes.9
Four recurring themes relative to the most commonly practised forms of settlement can be identified. The first is seen in
the road-block-building, the second in the reiteration of the models of the modern, the third in the search for variation,
probably with the desire to restore a visual and social complexity of the historical city, the fourth in the organization by
clusters. This last type cannot be traced back to specific models of settlement, but would depend on internal
thematization. For example, variable building density, or the connection of residential islands to the metropolis through
systems of infrastructures, recognisability of the intervention or strong characterization of public space.10
The residence is offered as a resource to guarantee liveability for the new city with the need to have the strength to
orient the dispersed city, creating symbolic spaces in correspondence with the significant nodes. For the public space to

7 E. Turri La megalopoli padana, Marsilio, Venice, 2000, pp. 23-24.

8 M.Gausa Housing, Actar, Barcelona, 1998, p. 41.
9 H. Kollhoff Costruzione urbana contro alloggio in Lotus 94, September 1997, p. 100 and 102.
10 C. Magni Il progetto dellabitazione e le forme del mutamento Clup, Milan.

316

MIC _ My Ideal City

be experienced, there has to be a high density of residence. High density also allows lowering the cost of the homes
because it amortizes the cost of the area on a higher number of apartments, This allows concentrating more resources
on the quality of the latter. In the search for the urban effect an important role is played by determining the formal and
functional aspects of the open space where the buildings stand.

3. The duration of the building

The problem of the duration of the residential building is a factor highlighted here, together with urban planning, in
relation to the question of sustainability. The deterioration that assails and has assailed many areas of low-cost
building, constructed according to the methods and technologies of modernity, is evident. The speed of the deterioration
of the materials has often corresponded to the great difficulty in finding funds for the renovation of the properties.
This has engendered phenomena of a loss of interest in the neighbourhood by the inhabitants and lack of identification
with their own home, a fact which fuels the spiral of deterioration. Moreover, building homes that last is a challenge not
only for low-cost housing but for buildings in general. It is my impression that buildings are destined not to last as well as
in the past, says Rafael Moneo. It is not just a problem of a lack of solidity. There is a widespread belief () according
to which buildings are destined to disappear and I also have this sensation. Architecture is about to become ephemeral
art.11 The effort to construct buildings that last is therefore a first step towards the sustainability of the building. In this
sense, the tradition of the Milanese apartment building built in the post-war period by architects such as Albini, Asnago
and Vender, Caccia Dominioni, Magistretti, Minoletti and Ponti, represents important evidence of constructive knowledge
combined with research aimed at the solidity and dignity of the home.

4. Faades in Milan between efficiency and conservation

In the case of the city of Milan and the dynamics of development that have characterised it in the last thirty years, it is
increasingly clear how important it is to return to the reflections and experiments on the apartment building by many
Milanese architects during the 1950s and 60s. The desire to measure up to the characteristics of the city and the
building knowledge used to confer a lasting nature on the home can be a reference to orient the forms of sustainable
building. The use of facing materials, the study of construction details necessary for the good functioning of the building,
integrated with reflections on the recognisability of the home, can contribute to defining forms of sustainable residences
from the point of view of preserving the building and, through updating, its energy efficiency. In particular, the firms of
Cino Zucchi Associati and Consalez Rossi Architetti Associati have recently worked in this direction. Their works are
declaredly in continuity with the reflections by the large number of architects who rebuilt Milan, which bore the mark of
bombings during the Second World War, and later its expansion. Amongst the most important figures, Gio Ponti (18911979), in Domus, the magazine he founded in 1928, laid down his programme of architecture stating a philosophy of
living aimed at reformulating the idea of the modern home. The Italian home is not the cosy and protected shelter of
dwellers against the harshness of the climate (...). Its design does depend solely on the material needs of living, it is not
only a machine habiter. The so-called comfort is not in the Italian home only in the things that meet the needs and

11 R. Moneo, Lidea di durata e i materiali della costruzione in La solidudine degli edifici ed altri scritti. Questioni intorno allarchitettura edited by A.
Casiraghi and D. Vitale, Umberto Allemandi & C., Turin-London, 2004, p. 212.

317

MIC _ My Ideal City

comfort of our lives and the organisation of services. Its comfort is something superior, it gives us back the measure of
our own thoughts; it encourages healthy habits through its simplicity; its expansive welcome fosters the feeling of a
confident, patriarchal life.12 There is a moral demand which the action of the architect must answer, the home is not only
a problem of art or technique, but of civilisation. In his words, a vision, a poetic and not a normative tension can be
perceived that is the result of an anti-dogmatic and a-specialist approach. In his reflection aimed at redeeming
architecture from the formal abstraction of a certain rationalist culture, he focuses on a reinterpretation of the relationship
with nature and tradition: We also have to rebuild Mans naturalness in the environment, understanding him as natural
history even in the verses of his spirit.13 He pursued an impatient search for a technical civilisation capable of
expressing the intrepid taste for the new to which he attributed value, characterising the myth of a culture ready to
continually be reborn from the ashes of its past.14 Exemplification in this sense is represented by the use that he made
of the light faade. Ponti believed that civilisation in general, and therefore architecture as well, proceeded from a heavy
period to a lighter one. This is a debate that is anything but settled and has also made a great return, it would suffice to
think of two very immediate examples such as Mario Botta and Herzog e De Meuron () who propose two different
hypotheses on the role of technology as a motor of different hypotheses linked to form: on the one hand the idea of
monumentality linked to the concentration of matter, on the other an idea of de-materialisation linked with the autonomy
of the skeleton of the faade.15 For Palazzo Montecatini, built between 1935 and 1938, Pontis faade aims to exalt the
regularity of the openings identifying horizontal and vertical alignments of the windows and openings which is well
represented by the abacus of the stones. The two materials produced by Montecatini, slabs of marble and aluminium,
become the protagonists of the entire building, being translated into an interesting means of communication and icon of
the group.all the window frames are exactly flush with the marble slabs of the faade, in order to eliminate the window
as a hole, as a contour of smashed-in wall.16 The aim was to remove all impressions of heaviness, taking lightness as
synonymous with civilisation. The division between the wrapping and frame on which technology could be based made it
not modern to speak of materiality. The Pirelli skyscraper (1956 -61) also adds to these principles the rejection of the
horizontal line in favour of a sort of polygon, which Ponti was to call the diamond line, and the association of the curtain
wall with the solid parts faced by ceramic tiles, a shiny, cleanable and washable material. In addition to looking for an
image appropriate to his time and place, Ponti was also looking for an incorruptible architecture, unlike the simply
plastered one of modernity which often tended to deteriorate quickly. The topicality of the heavy-light association was
also joined by that of lasting-ephemeral. Today the economy, in the more commercial meaning of the word, demands
schematic solutions and the factors affected by the economy, such as speed, industrialisation, the repetition of elements,
the ease of transport, also act in the same direction so that the entire building process has been transformed by them.
In the words of Raphael Moneo: a mimetic representation is often the sign of a very schematic thought.17 The
impression is that buildings are not meant to last as well as in the past. It is not just a question of a lack of solidity, but
the fact that architecture seems ready to become an ephemeral art. This is one of the reasons why architecture today

12 Gio Ponti, La casa allitaliana, Domus 1 (1928):1.

13 Gio Ponti, Dobbiamo trasferire lo studio della casa su altri termini, Lo stile 17 (1942).
14 Fulvio Irace, Milano Moderna. Architettura e citt nellepoca della ricostruzione (Milano: Federico Motta Editore, 1996), 50.
15 Fulvio Irace, La facciata alleggerita nel processo di rinnovamento dellarchitettura, ed. Giovanni Morabito (Roma: Gangemi Editore, 2004), 202.
16 Idem. 204.
17 Raphael Moneo, La solitudine degli edifici e altri scritti (Torino: Umberto Allemandi & C., 2004), 212.

318

MIC _ My Ideal City

often has recourse to a superficial image of its past: contemporary society does not believe that its creations can last.
What counts is the first impact of a building and not how long it will last.18

References
GAUSA M., Housing, Actar, Barcellona, 1998.
IRACE F. Milano Moderna. Architettura e citt nellepoca della ricostruzione, Federico Motta Editore, Milano,1996.
KOLLHOFF H., Costruzione urbana contro alloggio in Lotus n.94, 1997.
MAGNI C., Il progetto dellabitazione e le forme del mutamento Clup, Milano.
MONEO R., Lidea di durata e i materiali della costruzione in La solidudine degli edifici ed altri scritti. Questioni intorno
allarchitettura, CASIRAGHI A. and VITALE D. (ed.), Umberto Allemandi & C., Torino-London, 2004.
PONTI G. Ponti, La casa allitaliana in Domus, n.1, 1928.
PUGLIESE R., La strada dello spazio urbano in MORETTI A. (ed.), Le strade. Un progetto a molte dimensioni , Franco
Angeli/DST, Milano, 1996.
SAVINO M., Citt diffusa; reti; ambienti insediativi: la ricerca di una verosimile definizione dei processi di trasformazione del territorio, in INDOVINA F. (ed.), Territorio. Innovazione. Economia. Pianificazione. Politiche. Ventanni di
ricerca del Daest, Venezia, 1999.
TURRI E., La megalopoli padana, Marsilio, Venezia, 2000.

18 Ibidem.

319

MIC _ My Ideal City

Evaluation of the effectiveness of innovative and unconventional

systems in urban areas
Elisa Fornasieroa, IUAV University of Venice

1. Summary
The recent policies of the European Commission show that the sustainable mobility in urban areas is a question of prime
importance. The growth of transport demand in recent years, combined with a modal distribution skewed towards
polluting modes of transport, has led to consequences in terms of externalities production (congestion, environmental
pollution, safety etc..), which have obvious effects on peoples quality of life.
In line with European Union directives, which promotes a policy of sustainable mobility1, many cities have developed
transport solutions based on reduction of private vehicles in cities, promoting forms of "alternative mobility" based on the
use of bicycles and use of public transport or private transport shared (car-pooling and car-sharing).
In the promotion of public transport, in particular, the main aspects which are taken into account are performance's
efficiency, energy efficiency, quality of service and reduction of differences compared to private vehicles (often defined
by the term "discontinuity"): public transport is in fact generally characterized by limited accessibility in territory because
available only in specific points (stations, bus stops, etc.), a time-limited service frequency and rigid and predetermined
routes.
The reduction of these discontinuities is the principle underlying the new collective transport systems (innovative
systems and unconventional systems): they are characterized by a high level of automation, and by technological
features with high quality to achieve high level of energy efficiency and high performance even in terms of environmental
sustainability.
This research provides an overview of the problem of mobility in urban areas (real city) and presents an analysis of
cases where applications of unconventional and innovative systems have actually produced a positive outcome in terms
of performance, energy efficiency and reduction of externalities, in order to determine which could be the design of
mobility in a future city (ideal city).

Elisa Fornasiero, Iuav University of Venice, TTL Research Unit (Transport, Territory and Logistics Unit), Dorsoduro 2206, Venice.
fornasieroelisa@libero.it)
1 EU policy is described in White Paper 2011: Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area - Towards a competitive and resource efficient
transport system.
The European Commission adopted 40 concrete initiatives for the next decade to build a competitive transport system that will cut the number of
conventionally-fuelled cars in cities and at the same time, the proposals will dramatically reduce Europe's dependence on imported oil and cut
carbon emissions in transport by 60% by 2050.
a

320

MIC _ My Ideal City

2. The real city

Mobility vs. sustainability
Real cities are places having a high level of accumulation and concentration of different types of activities and are
complex spatial structures that are supported by transport systems. The most important transport problems are
frequently related to urban areas and happen when transport systems, cannot satisfy the frequent requirements of urban
mobility. Urban productivity is highly dependent on the efficiency of its transport system to move people and freight
between different origins and destinations. Moreover, main transport terminals such as airports and railway stations are
located inside urban areas, producing particular problems. There are different kind of problems: several are olden, like
congestion, as others are recent like environmental impacts. Different categories of important urban transport problems
are shown below:

Traffic congestion

Environmental impacts and energy consumption

Public transport unsuitability

Problems for bicycle and pedestrian mobility

Accident and fatalities

Land consumption

Bad use of public space

Traffic congestion is one of the most common transport problems in urban centres. The spread of private cars is the
main cause of the diffusion of this issue, because has increased the demand for new transport infrastructures.
Nevertheless, the supply of infrastructures has often not been able to sustain the continuous increase of private mobility.
Environmental impacts and energy consumption derived from the increase of private mobility, are the two most
important issues considered by the policies for sustainability. Pollution and noise, produced by traffic has become a
problem for the quality of life and the health of urban inhabitants2. Moreover, energy consumption by urban
transportation has significantly enlarged and consequently the dependency on petroleum, which, however, is a nonrenewable resource.
Public transport unsuitability depends also of over or under used of many public transit systems. During peak hours, the
large number of users creates discomfort. On the contrary, under-utilization of the system produces unsustainable costs.
The increase of private vehicle traffic produce difficulties for bicycle and pedestrians mobility. These difficulties depends
also of a low consideration for alternative mobility in the design of infrastructure.
Continuous growth of traffic in urban areas is linked with a increasing of accidents and fatalities3. These accidents
involves not only drivers but also vulnerable road users. As a consequence of traffic increases, people feel less safe to
use the streets.

Air pollutants released in one country may be transported in the atmosphere and harm human health and the environment elsewhere. Further
information is available in the Air Pollution thematic assessment of EEA's recent 'The European environment state and outlook 2010' report.
3 Data from Eurostat shows that in 2008, just under 34.500 people lost their lives in road accidents within the EU-27, even though continuing the
steady decrease in the number of fatalities on Europes roads. Source: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/home.
2

321

MIC _ My Ideal City

The territorial impact of transportation, in terms of utilization, is considerable. An elevated percentage of urban land is
usually dedicated to transport infrastructures. This land consumption highlights the importance of transportation in the
economic and social well-being of cities.
Traffic flows produce a bad use of public space influencing the life and relations of people and their possibility to use
public space. People be inclined to walk and use bicycle less when traffic in urban areas is higher.
Many dimensions to the urban transport problem, as described above, are linked with the dominance of the automobile.
The choice of automobile is linked to a variety of advantages such as comfort, speed, and convenience. The
consequence of these benefits is that the number of cars in circulation is constantly increasing, and this phenomenon
creates problems in particular in urban areas as a generator/attractor of movements.

3. The ideal city

Real cities all over Europe confirm similar problems in transport (congestion, road safety, security, pollution, climate
change due to CO2 emissions etc.) and these problems are increasing constantly. This situation shows a future scenario
where people having to pay an higher price not only in economic and environmental terms, but also as health and quality
of life. For this reason is important that urban transport policies present themselves as objective an ideal city where the
problems related to transport could be reduced or even better removed.
To achieve this objective would be important to consider five main characteristics referred to an ideal urban mobility:
free-flowing town, greener cities, smarter transport, wide accessibility, safe and secure travel.

Free-flowing town
Increasing traffic in urban areas leads to permanent congestion. This has negative economic, social and environmental
impacts and degrades the built environment. The annual costs are estimated at almost 100 billion Euro or 1% of the
European Union's GDP4.
In an Ideal city a fluid, correctly functioning transport system allows people a time-saving and a reduction of CO2
emissions.
There is no only a single solution to reduce congestion. In an Ideal city, for instance, collective transport, walking,
cycling, could be attractive and safe. Interchange between different modes of transport should be easy. Possible
solutions range from improvement of connections between modes, application of innovative and transport solutions,
good parking facilities in suburbs, carpooling and car-sharing.

Greener cities
The main environmental issues in towns and cities stem from the domination of oil as a transport fuel, which generates
CO2, and air pollutant emissions. Air and noise pollution are increasingly worrying. Urban mobility accounts for 40% of all
CO2 emissions of road transport and up to 70% of other pollutants from road transport 5. These have a negative impact
on citizens' health.
4
5

Source: Green Paper - Towards a new culture for urban mobility Commission of the European Communities, 2007.
Source: Green Paper - Towards a new culture for urban mobility Commission of the European Communities, 2007.

322

MIC _ My Ideal City

Ideal city would develop new and clean technologies for energy efficiency and alternative fuels accompanied by traffic
restrictions and green areas (pedestrian spaces, limited access zones, speed limits, etc).

Smarter transport
In Real cities there is a permanent increase of freight and passenger transport fluxes. At the same time, the
construction of new infrastructure to cope with this increase in traffic is often hindered by limitations related to lack of
space and environmental constraints.
In an Ideal city Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and urban traffic management could be an added value for an
efficient organization of urban mobility. A possible solution is given by implementations of systems for better traveller
information and ITS applications in towns and cities 6.

Wide accessibility
People needs more intelligent and high quality mobility solutions, and require accessible collective transport.
The ideal city would be solve this problem through new solutions for high quality public transport, new intermodal
terminals, and excellent links between suburban and urban transport networks.
The objective is to reach performance's efficiency, energy efficiency, quality of service and reduction of "discontinuity"
compared to private vehicles: public transport is will have wide accessibility in territory because available in many access
points, with a period service not limited, and more free routes.

Safe and secure travel

About two-thirds of road accidents and one-third of road fatalities takes place in urban areas with the most vulnerable
road users being pedestrians and cyclists7. In order to improve this situation, possible solutions in an ideal city this
problem could be solved having strict enforcement of traffic rules concrete application of traffic rules.
If people perceive an high personal security are inducted to travel using alternative transport services, having as a
consequence a reduction in use of private car.

4. Innovative and unconventional transport systems

What could be the way to reach the objective of an ideal transport (in an "ideal" city) in the real world?
One possible solution is given by development of new technology for a more sustainable use of the worlds resources.
The technology currently being developed is in many cases aimed at facilitating a sustainable development using the
latest applications in information and communication technology and in vehicle and fuel technology.
In the interest of sustainable mobility the "ideal" transport in an urban area should focus on public transport.
Despite cars have become fuel-efficient and the amount of emissions has dropped significantly, the use of private
vehicles produce other consequences related to the probable congestion, as the cost of time loss.

6
7

More information about application of ITS in Europe at http://ec.europa.eu/transport/its/index_en.htm.

Source: Green Paper - Towards a new culture for urban mobility Commission of the European Communities, 2007.

323

MIC _ My Ideal City

Ideal public transport takes into account performance's efficiency, energy efficiency, quality of service and reduction of
differences compared to private vehicles ("discontinuity"): ideal public transport has a huge accessibility in territory, an
unlimited service frequency and more free routes.
The reduction of these discontinuities is the principle underlying the new collective transport systems (innovative
systems and unconventional systems): they are characterized by a high level of automation, and by technological
features with high quality to achieve high level of energy efficiency and high performance even in terms of environmental
sustainability.
An important aspect of technological development in the transport sector is that construction and operation of
transportation systems is being transformed by computers, sensors, and communications technology, usually called
information technology (IT)8.
The application of IT to transportation is called Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). ITS have the ability to collect,
organize, analyze, use, and share information about transportation systems. This new technological ability is essential to
for the efficiency of transportation systems.
ITS can be installed as part of the transportation infrastructure to: collect and distribute traveller information, control
traffic signals and variable message signs and help manage the system. ITS also provides a wide array of in-vehicle
technology to improve safety, productivity, and comfort of road travel.
ITS can be use inside infrastructure and vehicle of new transport systems to improve their performances and to reach
the objective of reduce emissions, energy consumption, and discontinuities.
There are many examples of innovative and unconventional transport systems using ITS technologies that are
characterize from a fixed guideways and full automation.
Several new systems generally classified as Automated guideway transit (AGT), have been developed and are in
service, under test, or are conceptualized to solve specific transportation critic aspects.
Typical AGT consist in systems with variable capacity, fully automated, driverless, grade-separated, in which vehicles
are automatically guided along a guideway.
Representative examples of this class of systems are Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) and Group Rapid Transit (GRT),
People Mover, and Accelerating Moving Walkways.
Development and improvement of these systems could be the way to reach the concept of ideal transport.

Personal Rapid Transit Systems (PRT)

PRT is one of the most energy efficient urban transit system that has been designed.
PRT consists of small 2 or 4 passenger vehicles running on elevated guideways under computer control without human
driver and with a speed of 40-60 km/h. The vehicles are electric and take power from electric contacts in the guideway.

Information and communications technology ICT, is often used as an extended synonym for information technology (IT) that underline the
integration of telecommunications, intelligent management systems and audio-visual technologies. IT consists of all technical means used to handle
information and aid communication. In other words, ICT consists of IT based on control and monitoring functions.

324

MIC _ My Ideal City

These vehicles are small because they are designed for a limited number of passengers, and consequently
infrastructure (guideways and stations) require little space. Computers control the entire systems and for this reason is
impossible to have congestions.
Stations are adjacent to the main lines, and travel is non-stop to the destination chosen by the passenger.
Vehicles wait at stations for passengers to arrive and there are no schedules or fixed routes. Passengers decide their
destination, and the system brings them there without intermediate stops. PRT guideways can be built underground or
over the streets supported by posts on the sidewalk. Computers find the best path to each destination and decide the
safe distance between vehicles. Guideways cross each other at different heights.
Comparing PRT to other systems is notable9 that:

system use 4 time less energy than automobile;

is 3-5 times faster than bases and 2-3 times faster than cars in rush hours;

automation allows an high level of safe;

one guideway lane has 4 times the passengers capacity of a street lane with traffic lights;

0,02% of land use compared to 30% for private vehicles;

A factor of 100 less noise than cars, buses, and trains.

Group Rapid Transit Systems (GRT)

Group Rapid Transit (GRT) is a form of collective public transport using small automated electric buses (maximum
capacity 24 passengers) to provide on demand service and shuttle services connecting different terminals placed in
strategic points.
To use the system, passenger presses a button at the stop to call the vehicle and then another on the vehicle to select
the destination. The automatic bus arrive and then go directly to the selected destination unless called by other users to
pick up or set down along the way.
This guarantees waiting times are shorter and vehicles are only used when there is a demand. Scheduled services are
also possible to optimise capacity during periods of high demand.
GRT provide10:

a flexible alternative to bus schemes;

highly efficient operation because operate when there is a demand;

low operating costs compared to typical bus or tram;

simple accessible services;

low waiting times;

automated, electric and quiet vehicle provide a pollution reduction.

Source: http://www.personalrapidtransit.com/
Source: http://www.niches-transport.org/

10

325

MIC _ My Ideal City

Automated People Mover

An Automated People Mover (APM) is public transport system, which consists of vehicles that have automatic
(driverless) guide system and use dedicated guideways.
The term is applied to different systems, developed about at the same time. The term "people mover" is generic, and
may use technologies such as monorail, automated guideway transit or maglev. Propulsion may involve conventional onboard electric motors, linear motors or cable traction.
APM are usually in the form of trains consisting of one or more vehicles. Each train operates on a single route that can
have intermediate stations. The system capacity ranges from 1000 to 30.000 p/h/d.
APM and PRT systems have many features which are similar. They are both systems featuring automatic vehicles
running on segregated track, which may be at-grade, underground, or elevated and both have a series of dedicated
stations.
However the nature of the transport service offered differs a lot.

Accelerating Moving Walkway

An Accelerating Moving Walkway11 (AMW) is a system that constantly moves passengers: system has an acceleration
from a low speed at the entrance point to a higher speed at the mid-sector of the walkway, and then has a deceleration
to a low speed again at the exit point. AMW has no waiting time, unless the capacity of the system is exceeded.
Actual moving walkways are providing transport along straight lines. However, there have been developments of spiral
escalators and curved moving walkways. The high-speed sector of AMW has speed ranging between 1,3 and 3,3 m/s.
The entry and exit speeds are the same and are between 0,5 and 0,83 m/s. Taking the common treadway width of 1 m a
moving walkway can have a theoretical capacity between 9.000 and 15.000 p/h/d. The environmental impacts of AMW
are relatively low. There is no local pollution because is powered electrically and the noise level is low, particularly in
systems with a rubber- belt treadway. The characteristics of systems described above are compared in Table 1.

Average
Speed
(km/h)

System
Capacity
(p/h/d)

Corridor width
(m)

Headway

Noise level

Energy use

(s)

(dB)

(MJ/pax km)

PRT

20-25

1.800-7.200

4-5

5-30

35-65

0.55

GRT

40

3.000- 15.000

15

APM

15-50

1.000-30.000

4,4-6,5

60-180

54-72

1,62-12,78

AMW

4,75-12

9.000-15.000

2,5-4,7

54

0,11

Table 1. Main features of the transport systems described

11

Source: Sreejith P., Accelerating Moving walkway - An in depth analysis of pros and cons of Accelerating moving walkway, 2010

326

MIC _ My Ideal City

5. Best practices in transport innovation for an ideal city

Masdar City PRT
Masdar city12 will be one of the most sustainable cities in the world. Situated 17km from Abu Dhabi, the city will have
40.000 residents and hundreds of businesses and will use only renewable energy and sustainability technologies.
In Masdar, a network of PRT will provide clean and quiet transportation to the citys residents, as well as commuters.
In addition to the PRT system in Masdar City there will be a light rail, which will cross the city.
Masdar City's PRT system will have no rush hour congestion. When the computer perceives that the network is
approaching full capacity, will not allow cars to leave stations. Generally waiting time is no more than a three minutes at
a station.
The PRT vehicles will travel at speeds of approximately 25 km/h, with the longest routes in the city being perhaps 2,5km.
PRT cars will move along rights of way, approximately 6 meters under street level.

GRT in Rotterdam: ParkShuttle

ParkShuttle is an automated system of driverless electric buses connecting the Kralingse Zoom metro station and car
park with the Rivium business park13. The system became fully operational in early 2006. It uses 6 buses, each with
seats for 12 and a maximum capacity (including standing passengers) for 24.
The vehicles are electric and provide clean, green, efficient and sustainable public transport with low waiting times (1,5
to 3 minutes on average).
System infrastructure was built at ground-level to reduce costs. The infrastructure consists of a simple, 3 meter wide
asphalt track. The distance between Kralingse Zoom metro station and Rivium business park is about 1.200 meters. The
track is not fully separated. The only separation consists of a one meter high fence and a greenzone with bushes.
Start up costs are more expensive than for a conventional bus scheme, but the operating costs are less.

People Mover in Venice

This project14 was created to meet a specific need of residents and visitors, within a context of rethinking Venice's main
access points. System links three poorly-connected areas: Piazzale Roma (bus and ferries terminal), Tronchetto (the
main parking area of Venice) and the Marittima station (harbour area). The need was connect them, because these
locations are strategic access points. The adopted solution was the fully-automatic, driverless APM system that connects
Piazzale Roma and Tronchetto with an intermediate stop in the Marittima station.
The length is 822 m and is a monorail built at an average height of 7 metres, along which shuttle-trains run at a top
speed of 28 km/h. Each train can carry up to 200 passengers, thus giving a maximum 3.000 pax/h capacity.
The trains use rubber tyres to guarantee minimal noise. The infrastructure is completed by three stations with steel and
transparent glass architectural solution.

Source: http://www.masdar.ae/en/home/index.aspx
Source: http://www.2getthere.eu/
14 Source: www.apmvenezia.com/
12
13

327

MIC _ My Ideal City

Moving Walkways in Hong Kong: Central-Mid-Levels escalator

The CentralMid-levels escalators15 in Hong Kong is the longest outdoor covered escalator system in the world. The
entire system covers more than 800 metres in distance and elevates over 135 metres from bottom to top. It was
constructed in 1993 to provide a better commute by linking Central and Western District on Hong Kong Island.
It links Des Voeux Road in Central with Conduit Road in the Mid-levels, passing through narrow streets. The daily traffic
exceeds 55.000 people, although originally estimate 27.000.
It consists of twenty escalators and three moving side-walks. The total travel time is twenty minutes. Considering the
particular geographical situation, the same distance corresponding to several kilometres of roads if travelling by car.
Apart from serving as a method of transporting, it is also a tourist attraction and has restaurants, bars, and shops along
the path with a point for entrance/exit on each road it passes.

6. Conclusions
Pollution and congestion are between the most challenging issues of the economy of our days. A long series of policies
and recommendations at various administrative levels were developed to reduce their impact.
It is well-known that the current automobile-based transportation contributes actively to both these causes and that a
encouraging modal split towards transit may help to lessen the external costs induced from urban mobility.
This paper has dealt with the main features of ideal public transport and has described the features and the
implementation of some real less impacting transportation systems.
Among the proposed systems APM have the highest hourly capacity and speed. Their visual impact on the area is
certainly significant if built over the streets supported by posts, but is lower if designed underground. Also the noise
impact and energy consumption are lower than those of a private vehicle.
In an ideal city, a transport system with these characteristics would be suitable for commuting between suburbs and
central areas: interchange park areas located far from the center (thus with lesser impact on the territory compared to
central areas) would swap between private electric vehicles and APM systems, allowing users to reach the city center in
a very short time (considering system automation and the potential headway), hereby radically reducing congestion
impacts.
An "ideal" transit service in the city centers can be provided by GRT and PRT systems.
The operating principle of these two systems is very similar: they reduce significantly time and space discontinuities
typical of the most common public transport systems (bus, metro, tram). Noise and visual impacts are lower than the
APM systems. Impacts are significant if built over the streets supported by posts, but are lower if designed underground.
The increased safety for vulnerable users is a consequence of the movement in its own fix guideway.
Congestion reduction resulting from the use of such systems are two key elements that produce positive effects on
pedestrian and bicycle mobility and a better use of public space.
The choice between a PRT or GRT for the management of mobility in urban areas is linked to the results of feasibility
and demand analyses.

15

Source: Hong Kong's Central-Mid Levels Escalator - The Longest in the World, Rory Boland.

328

MIC _ My Ideal City

AMW systems are particularly suitable planning an ideal transport system for travel within the historic city centers. The
historical centers of the cities of ancient formation are essential elements in the reasoning about the "ideal" city: they
represent an heritage to preserve and are usually great points of attraction where many activities are located. Because
of their shape and constraints, the management of public transport within them is often complex.
AMW systems were likely to be ideal for the management of travel in the city centers: they have an high capacity, a very
low noise impact and a low energy consumption (the lowest among the systems analyzed in this study). The visual
impact is minimal because the system can be realized on the ground level. Infrastructure, system and access points
have compact size and are therefore well adapted to complex urban structures.
These systems optimize the use of public space and produce a positive effect on pedestrian and bicycle mobility.
These rows show that such systems may provide a solution to the problem tackled above and that their implementation
may be promising within transportation planning.

References
BOLAND R., Hong Kong's Central-Mid Levels Escalator - The Longest in the World.
CAPPELLI A., Le modalit di servizio ed i sistemi non convenzionali ed innovativi, in Ingegneria Ferroviaria n. 11,
2008.
COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES, Green Paper - Towards a new culture for urban mobility,
Bruxelles, 2007.
EEA - EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENT AGENCY, The European environment state and outlook 2010, Office of the
European Union, 2010.
EUROPEAN COMMISSION, Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area - Towards a competitive and resource
efficient transport system, White Paper 2011, Bruxelles, 2011.
RODRIGUE J.P., COMTOIS C., SLACK B., The Geography of Transport Systems, Routledge, 2009.
SREEJITH P., Accelerating Moving walkway - An in depth analysis of pros and cons of Accelerating moving walkway,
2010.

Websites
http://www.2getthere.eu/ , Company that deals with develop and market innovative systems
http://www.apmvenezia.com/, Venice People Mover homepage
http://ec.europa.eu/transport/its/index_en.html , European Commission information about ITS in Europe
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/home, Eurostat statistical publications
http://www.masdar.ae/en/home/index.aspx , Masdar city official website
http://www.niches-transport.org , GRT key characteristics
http://www.personalrapidtransit.com/, PRT main features

329

MIC _ My Ideal City

Reshaping the city ground-scape with vegetation

Maria Livia Olivetti, University of Roma Tre, Dipartimento di Progettazione e studio dellarchitettura

1. Introduction
The following text is a part of a wider research named Living Urban Scape1 carried on by the University of Roma Tre
and the IUAV University of Venice. Aim of the work is to provide a new way of reading and understanding the urbanscape as to define new strategies of urban regeneration by landscape and by social principles. The investigation is
focused on the empty pieces of land that are present in the contemporary big cities, especially in the suburban and
residential zones. We think that these areas are crucial to reach a new and different meaning of living in such territories.
Our research method is based on the consciousness that with a careful use of vegetation it is possible to achieve
important results into the urban renovation process. New environments for new natures2. We should start giving
thought To dynamic evolutions rather than static positions. To impure developments rather than basic figurations.()
To topologies rather than typologies. To landscapes rather than edifices. Architecture established (from now on) like
geographies.3 In fact, if we start the renovation process from the reshaping of the ground-scape of the city we could
overcome the traditional dimension of the urban environment.

Figure 1. Logo of the Living Urban Scape national research project: www.livingurbanscape.org

2. Vegetation as climate control tool

The actual asphalt territories, particularly the parterre of the suburban residential blocks could be redesigned
integrating vegetable elements, to provide a better climate situation. By an energy-saving and healthy point of view is it
known that vegetation produces the oxygen necessary for life (it is estimated that a leaf surface of 25 square meters
provides the daily requirements of oxygen for a person), and fosters the development of biodiversity. Vegetation works
on a number of levels: it absorbs the excesses of carbon dioxide present in the urban environment; it captures toxic
gases, dusts and particles thus diminishing the levels of pollutants in the environment; it serves a thermo-regulatory

www.livingurbanscape.org
Gausa M., Architecture is (now) geography (other urban natures) in Green Island. Piazze, isole e verde urbano, Damiani, Bologna 2008, p. 18.
3 Gausa M., Architecture is (now) op. cit., p. 19.
1
2

330

MIC _ My Ideal City

function, preventing the excessive heating of the ground and favoring the movement of air closest to the ground: in a
word, it improves the livability of the urban environment4.

3. Vegetation and ground-scape design as social and identity renaissance tool

Furthermore a careful choice of different tree and plant species can contribute to a social and identity renaissance of the
suburban areas. Vegetation can be used not only in an energy efficient way but also in an appealing way. In fact, special
attention to the light variation and to the color brightness of the species provides a reading and a fruition of the
landscape that can be perceived in a unique and personal way by each inhabitant. The lesson of Bernard Lassus
demonstrates that: Light and color become basic research topics to deeply explore the relationship between real and
apparent, light and dark, and the color variations. Thats the way perception becomes a reading and a design tool.5 One
of the latest work of Lassus, the hanging gardens of Colas Foundation (2008) is formed by multicolored garden elements
(which can respond to the four seasons) and interweaves natural and artificial landscape elements. Such a design
demonstrates a way of understanding and reinventing the landscape like an heterogeneous place, multicultural and
democratic6. Furthermore a poetic design of the landscape architect Ken Smith named P.S. 19 located in one of the
poorest New York City neighborhoods (Queens) shows the potential of the soil to be element of social cohesion and
good-identity factor. The project, in a few words, shows the reshaping of the ground area where the various pavilions of
the school where placed, with the use of trees, various vegetation types, colors on asphalt and giant colored pots of
plants. This schoolyard (..) gave us the opportunity to give a new sense of pride, color, and playfulness to the barren
asphalt spaces woven through the schools classroom buildings, temporary structures that have been in use for 20
years.7 At the end of the construction process, having modeled the asphalt ground-scape, and after a period of
observation, testing his work with the children that attended the school, Smith said that P.S. 19 shows that we can
achieve socially responsible city parks and great design at the same time. If we look beyond typical off-the-shelf
benches, play structures, and planters, it is possible to reimaging everyday city objects and spaces as opportunities for
wonder8.

Figure 2.The hanging garden of Colas foundation by Bernard Lassus, 2008

Favini E., Verdecuratodavoi in Green island, op. cit., p. 43.

Bagliani F. (edited by), Paesaggio: un esperienza multiculturale. Scritti di Bernard Lassus, Kappa, Roma 2010, p. 14.
6 Bagliani F. (edited by), Paesaggio, op. cit., p. 16.
7 Ken Smith landscape architect, Monacelli, New York, 2009, p. 104.
8 Ken Smith, op. cit., p. 107.
4
5

331

MIC _ My Ideal City

Figure 3. Plan of the P.S. 19 school ground floor, Ken Smith 2003

Figure 4. P.S. 19 school, Queens, New York

4. Two case studies in Rome: Casale Caletto and Santa Maria del Soccorso
The research group Living Urban Scape (the Roma Tre group is composed by Maria Livia Olivetti and Andrea Vidotto)
has started to analyze two case studies of public housing suburbs in Rome (Santa Maria del Soccorso and Casale
Caletto). These two neighborhoods are both periphery, with a predominance of social housing buildings and a great
presence of empty space in-between and around the buildings. The buildings date back to the 70 and 80: medium size
(5-6 levels), with an envelope of grey prefabricated panels or red bricks and a concrete structure. The typologies are the
linear one and the courtyard one. Both cases need to find a meaning for the unused land areas around them, in order to
activate the urban regeneration process in its ecological and social dimension.

Casale Caletto
Casale Caletto is like an island within the roman country. It has an extraordinary location in between two strong lines of
infrastructures (the City Ring and a major highway) and the landscape of the natural park of the Aniene river. Sitting at
the corner of the garden of the main building of the settlement (on the north-west) it is possible to get a glimpse of the
SantEusebio fort. The view of the natural vegetation of the Aniene valley is all around. The relationship between the
architectonic form of the settlement and the landscape morphology gives to the neighborhood an enormous value still to
be discovered. There is no need of urban densification, because the sense of the operation is to enhance the beauty of
the space putting into action a precise operation on the space that connects the buildings with the open landscape. The
arrangement of a place throughout a significant change of the physic environment is the effort to replace landscapes
that we were not able to perceive or to imagine: a designed landscape. () A minimal intervention, also the smallest

332

MIC _ My Ideal City

one, almost imperceptible, could reveal landscapes that werent in an heterogenic sequence of objects or challenge the
usual understanding of a place9. These operation in Casale Caletto could consist in the organization of a new
intermediate nature, (with the placement of some trees and plants and the organization of the existing nature and
structure), that walks the architecture to the landscape and, at the same time, provides social spaces for the inhabitants.
As Tom Trevor says in an analysis of the work of Lois Weinberg: Nature and culture overlap in these sites, on the
periphery of social space. This is a second hand nature, flourishing in a post -industrial landscape a secondary
nature.10

Figure 5. Aerial view of Casale Caletto neighbourhood and a scheme of its location into the urban contest

Figure 6. Glimpse of the Casale Caletto unused open spaces in between the buildings

Santa Maria del Soccorso

Santa Maria del Soccorso neighborhood is located in a more central part of the city (on the north-est) than Casale
Caletto, and it is locked between various high density urban settlements (Monte Sacro, Tiburtino and Ponte Mammolo)
and the Aniene Valley. The significant presence of vegetation together with the spatial distribution of the buildings and
the architectonic morphology allows to think of a new design and a reinforcement of the present vegetation as a real and
concrete solution for the regeneration of the suburb. The head of the neighborhood is formed by three big courtyards.
The open and public space of the courtyards have never been equipped with the expected services, and now are empty
and useless. Reshaping the ground-floor of this spaces and of the spaces in-between the buildings, it would make
possible to perceive a new dimension of experiencing this place. In fact, the green soil emphasizes the social and
community needs that so often seems to be denied to the suburbs inhabitants. Furthermore, since the green mass

Lassus B., Couleur, lumirepaysage. Istants dune pdagogie, Monum. ditions du patrimonie, Paris 2004, pag. 163 (translation by the author).
Trevor T., Secondary Nature in Green island, op. cit., p. 50.

10

333

MIC _ My Ideal City

present in Santa Maria del Soccorso is very considerable, if it would be increased and rationalized, it could ameliorate
the environmental conditions of the neighborhood, also reducing the urban heat island effect. As to the renovation of
Santa Maria del Soccorso place and landscape, it was announced a contest11, and the winning project (submitted by the
team of Carmen Espegel) has its main feature in the new modeled ground-scape that connects the buildings on the
courtyards, like they where a unique architectonic system, and creates a comfortable and nice open-space where the
community can meet. The project of Carmen Espegel will be soon realized according to the regional law12 for the social
housing blocks. Both cases, Santa Maria del Soccorso and Casale Caletto would need a dedicated study of the
economic investment and of the future management of the areas, once they are fully renovated. In fact, it would be
strictly necessary to find the way of generating an economic process that enabling the promoted greening action to be
part of a more general renaissance. This would allow to identify such pieces of the city with new reference points for the
whole urban system.

Figure7. Aerial view of Santa Maria del Soccorso neighbourhood with the Aniene river and valley on the North

Figure 8. The new ground-scape and green system design of Santa Maria del Soccorso, by Carmen Espegel 2010

11
12

http://www.aterroma.it/concorsopass
Lazio regional law n. 21 of 2009 Extraordinary measures for the construction sector ad social housing interventions.

334

MIC _ My Ideal City

5. Conclusions
Rather than object architecture we should be able to speak of environmental architectures those associated with a
new understanding of place (and space in general) as a field of forces open and plural and no longer with a fixed
and stabilized context (historical, typological ,figurative, etc.). These architectures could be described as fields-infields13 In the case studies illustrated above the promoted greening action could be a concrete and sustainable
solution to the environmental decay, from many point of view: environmental, social, identity and economic too. This is
much more evident while we are talking about suburbs: fallows/peripheries are gardens and places where boundaries
turn out to be in motion, uncertain14. The aim and the main result of the Living Urban Scape research would be to
devise many projects where the city grond-scape can be the method and the matter of its own renovation. There is no
way we can leave nature untouched. We are part of nature, and we change the planet while living on it. We only have to
make sure that we change it for the better.15

References
LASSUS B., Couleur, lumirepaysage. Istants dune pdagogie, Monum. ditions du patrimonie, Paris 2004.
ZANFI C. (edited by), Green Island. Piazze, isole e verde urbano, Damiani, Bologna 2008.
ZANFI C. (edited by), The mobile garden. Lois Weimberg, Damiani, Bologna 2009.
Ken Smith landscape architect, Monacelli, New York 2009.
BAGLIANI F. (edited by), Paesaggio unesperienza multiculturale. Scritti di Bernard Lassus, Kappa, Roma 2010.
MAAS W. et al.,Green dream. How future cities can outsmart nature, NAI, Belgium 2010.
OLIVETTI M.L., Il verde come strumento di riqualificazione. Gli aspetti teorici e sperimentali delluso del verde in architettura con progetto applicativo su edifici residenziali pubblici, Aracne, Roma 2011.
WWW.LIVINGURBANSCAPE.ORG

Gausa M., Architecture is, op. cit., p. 18.

Weimberg L. in The mobile garden. Lois Weimberg, Damiani, Bologna 2009, p. 53.
15 Maas W. et al., Green dream. How future cities can outsmart nature, NAI, Belgium 2010, p. 84.
13
14

335

MIC _ My Ideal City

Eco-Urban Retrofitting
Trondheim, Norway
Luca Donner, Donner Sorcinelli Architecture

Strategy
Very often the historical memory of an area is not an obstacle to construction, but rather an added value for the
arrangement of public places, an irreplaceable element of urban quality, fruit of the long sedimentation of fragments of
social life. And the historicity of a place itself already enfolds the solution for the integration of the new housing needs
with connections at an urban level.
The quality of life is frequently measured in terms of chances to enjoy moments, places, areas to us familiar, in which we
feel part of a community. The choice to maintain and updating part of the existent buildings, almost as to form an ideal
backbone for the neighbourhood, with all its ramifications, is aimed at recreating a meeting point for the residents in
which everyone can identify oneself. A place where specific personal needs are tied to the not less important urban
needs, i.e. to connect the main pedestrian street (Strandveien Street) to Doras cultural spaces, collective and green
areas.

General project guidelines

The aim in reconverting these structures is to create a line of residential buildings having private, public and semi-public
use, such as exhibition spaces, art galleries, conference hall, shops, offices and collective work areas for the residents.
Such work areas are connected through internal stairs to the house units located in the new residential buildings, in
order to establish a close relationship between the residential area and the work place.

336

MIC _ My Ideal City

People can live and work within the same neighbourhood - also thanks to telematic lines -, go shopping just round the
corner and relax in their private garden. However, in addition, this microcosm is a place of interaction with the city that
surrounds it, as here everyday life enters the house context not only metaphorically, but also physically thanks to a
pedestrian road full of shops and laboratories for young people, artists, families and the elderly. All this sets down the
conditions for a well integrated blend of life styles. First of all the settlement, based on rectangular clusters, meets the
requirement of being a sort of theatre stage with respect to the main optical cones marking the entrance to the
neighbourhood and the adjoining public places, without squeezing the existent urban fabric with its volume. Secondly it
meets the need to exploit natural light all the year round thanks to modular heights and well oriented facades. The
pedestrian precinct has been improved on Strandveien Street, by exploiting the existent traffic-free road within the
neighbourhood, and by creating services that attract social exchange fluxes. For this reason, existing buildings have
been converted and some minor parts demolished. In the light of a future completion of the area, the reconvertion of
Dora have been planned. The intervention on Strandveien Street consists in the realization of five new buildings in direct
contact with the already existing ones, designed for housing, ateliers, an art gallery, a conference hall as well as a work
place for residents. All these spaces can be easily taken, thanks to the particular structure and morphology that
characterizes them. The ground floor, it was thought to be permeable as possible, obtaining a small square inside the
central part of the site, directly linked to the Performance Hall on the back, and supplemented with a small open
amphitheatre directly connected to the conference room.

Housing model

337

MIC _ My Ideal City

The objective of this project is that of offering a new housing model able to establish new social relationships among
different generations and different life styles.
We have conceived various different basic typologies of apartments (duplex, triplex and simplex) with their related
variations, to offer residents the best solution to their needs.
Besides the different apartment sizes that vary according to the requirements of the family groups and the possible coworking spaces, some other elements enhance the quality of the domestic space, such as double heights, small different
levels, terraces, and the fact that some duplexes overlook different floors.
Some houses have been specifically designed for families with children and elderly people so that they have direct
access to the internal courtyard.
However the particular aspect is given by the horizontal tree distribution system: access to different blocks on the
ground floor is possible through a public space similar to a corridor (the trunk), while through private stairs and bridges
(the branches) to the apartments on the upper floor.
Thanks to this system, number of common stairs are limited, that contribute to creating a complex and articulated space,
characterised by empty areas to favour liaising among residents.
Some hybrid typologies of duplex houses have been designed in order to create a constant variation in the perception of
the surrounding space by providing a continuous change in both heights and horizon lines.
This has been achieved thanks to the symbiosis of the distribution system internal to the housing block with the one of
every single living unit.
The composition of the residential block is achieved through a complex and ramified combination of various types of
houses (such as one-roomed flats, duplexes, and penthouses), giving rise to variations in standard typologies.

Construction system

The construction system is based on a steel supporting structure, with inspectionable floors through which system ducts,
inserted in the interstitial spaces of the main corridors, pass. All the facades are in Prefabricated wood panels covered
with wooden slats and low thermal dispersion glass, with integrated solar light regulating systems inside windows frame.
All construction materials will be natural and certified.
The apartments are provided with integrated telematic lines that enable telework from home.

338

MIC _ My Ideal City

Traffic and parking

During various phases, traffic outside the neighbourhood will remain unchanged, while interior one will change in a
radical way, thanks to Strandveien Street and Maskinistgata closed to traffic and opening two new lanes on the railway
embankment, one for cars, with the introduction of new traffic directions.
The parking lots belonging to business activities and residents are arranged on two big multi-level parking buildings near
the railway and other ones underground, in compliance with the standards requested.
These choices have been implemented to make fully pedestrian and cycling, the area in its entirety, and to encourage a
soft real mobility, also based on the use of existing public transport.
The existing railway line that crosses the area, will be reused to handle installations and mobile facilities for various
festivals and artistic events in general.

energy efficiency

339

MIC _ My Ideal City

Dora will represent not only a cultural incubator for the city, but also the energy producer for the quarter, thanks to a photovoltaic
system that will replace the current elevation above and will cover the entire roof surface, providing electricity, which will cover all
requirements of the district itself. This system will be supplemented by geothermal plants for heating and air conditioning inside
buildings.
The goal of achieving zero emissions of CO2 in the project, is also based on an extended program of soft mobility, passive building
solutions, use of natural building materials, reuse of rainwater and collection of urban waste .
Therefore sustainability not only for energy but also cultural and social.
future development
It is possible to extend the urban settlement model also to the remaining part of the neighbourhood, subject-matter of the study, by
prolonging the backbone on Strandveien Street., hence creating an urban core. This can be achieved thanks to the partial salvage
and reutilization of the existent buildings associated to the completion of the north-western front on the Street itself.
By replicating the model used for the project area, private green areas can be created in the courtyards that now comes into being.
Such green areas may be enlarged beyond the districts limits.

340