Abstract
In the world of urbanism, architecture and landscape, new paradigms are currently changing the way people think about or interact with economic crisis, quality of life and self-made practices. In a scenario where the scale and pace of market-driven urbanization and ephemeral landscapes of pop-up settlements are challenging the notion of permanence as a basic planning principle, the regeneration of the city in the twenty-first century aims to the definition of multi-level approaches associated with emergent socio-spatial challenges. Many of the most promising ideas in this field are that of the reformulation, reclamation and recycle of variable patterns of open spaces as real generators of urban life. This paper presents a theoretical framework, understanding how urban regeneration processes, through the ‘bottom-up’ redevelopment of residual spaces, can represent an attempt to reduce degradation of peri-urban fragile environments and to find environmentally compatible ways of increasing the definition of urban productive landscapes.
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Notes
- 1.
Only 11% of the land is suitable for agricultural production without improvements made by man or by external devices, and its intensive use in the long period impoverishes greatly the quality of the soil. All over the world, 75% of the soil put in production is compromised by erosion with a peak of 62% in Europe. Every year we lost from 5 to 7 million hectares of arable lands. The greatest risk is posed by water erosion and the poor drainage (affecting 55% of cases), followed by the low absorption of nutrients and by the high level of acidity/salinity (28%). Source: FAOSTAT (2012) http://faostat.fao.org/.
- 2.
According to FAO definition, food security is defined as «… the achievement of a condition where everyone has the opportunity to access to enough food to satisfy own nutritional needs and food preferences to lead an active and healthy life». This definition also includes a large extent to Safety, even if the latter receives much less attention in the international discussion.
- 3.
Ecological footprint has emerged as one of the world’s leading measure of human demand on nature. Firstly introduced by Wackernagel and Rees (1998), today this quantitative and qualitative assessment measurement is used to define the ecological deficit of a region per number of inhabitants, compared with many other statistical data define an important benchmark for our planet’s health. Source: Global Footprint Network (2016) http://www.footprintnetwork.org/.
- 4.
Our Common Future, technically known as Brundtland Report, is a document issued in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) where the concept of ‘sustainable development’ has been introduced as the capacity to satisfy the needs of present population without compromising the future generations.
- 5.
The Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 was the first global meeting on issues relating to the environment. It was attended by 172 governments to build a synthesis framework on the strategic issues of the ecology that led to the drafting of the Kyoto Protocol, of local development programmes (Agenda 21) and of the Conventions on climate change and biological diversity.
- 6.
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) establishes the concept of ecosystem services as supporting natural benefits for living beings. The report entails four different categories: life support (all earth’s primary production, such as soil, water, air-wind, vegetation), procurement (nutrients, food and finite resources), regulation (natural cycle for climate, water and soil regeneration) and health and well-being (education, recreational, aesthetic and spiritual values).
- 7.
In the discipline of ecology, the term resilience describes the capacity of a system to absorb shock or external influencing forces, by adapting its configuration and enabling different responses for restoring the equilibrium. In ecology, different properties can be used to measure the resilience attitude of an ecosystem, such as the degree of biodiversity, the multiplication of uses (redundancy), the self-regenerating capacity of a terrain, the panarchy (mutual influence between level of hierarchies in a context).
- 8.
The application of ecological resilience to urban and territorial studies is not an easy task and represents an area of academic interesting of growing importance that can be subdivided in the following principle lines: climate urgencies, transition towards sustainable energy resources, ecological remediation and mitigation, disaster recovery, socio-ecological systems (Pickett et al. 2004; Colding 2007; Scotti-Petrillo and Prosperi 2011; Wilkinson 2011).
- 9.
Critical regionalism is a design approach different from vernacularism, which attempts to face the loss of distinctive character of the International Style, providing renewed architectural principles but rooted into site-specific cultural context. The term was coined by A. Tzonis and L. Lefaivre and then theorized by K. Frampton, and illustrated in the publication Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance.
- 10.
The term territorialism is defined an approach to urbanism and planning based on the school of A. Magnaghi with other Italian academicians, which is focused on the local qualitative and on self-sustainable development. This approach intends to combine a deeper background knowledge of local arts and crafts and cultural heritage, with reference to bio-regionalism of P. Geddes, and the idea of self-government and place-consciousness.
- 11.
The High Line (2006–2009) is a linear park designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Field Operations, on a disused section of New York’s West Side Line. An agri-tecture project which alternates landscape inspired rooms with gradients and colours of pioneer plant species. Source: Dimendberg E (2013) Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Architecture after Images, Monacelli Press: New York.
- 12.
The conversion of the Val d’en Joan landfill into a landscape for agriculture and energy production on the part of Battle y Roig is supported by three key themes: the topography, water and vegetation. Source: Abitare la Terra, n.37/2015 Geoarchitettura.
- 13.
The intervention of Studio Terragni proposes the reuse in the two decommissioned highway tunnels under the hill of Piedicastello in Trento, merging recycled components of contemporary restoration. Source: Terragni E. (2010) Tunnel REvision: le gallerie di Piedicastello; The Trento Tunnels, Fondazione Museo storico del Trentino, Cataloghi XII Biennale di Architettura di Venezia.
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Sommariva, E. (2018). Urban Productive Landscapes: Designing Nature for Re-acting Neo-liberal City. In: Sadri, H. (eds) Neo-liberalism and the Architecture of the Post Professional Era. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76267-8_15
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