Urban Design and Fabric Reconversion in Italy and in The Netherlands

Abstract

Following the end of the urban growth verified
in the last 20 years the attention is focused on the city
and on the understanding of its different parts and of
their systemic relationships. The deindustrialization
with the connected disposal of the urban structures, tied
up to the economic transformations of the period from
1945 to 1985 has set in a central position of the
urbanistic debate the presence of the urban voids and
the deindustrialised areas inside the cities.
Nowadays there is the need to overcome partial logics
and to frame the transformation in an optics that
overcomes the planning for projects, as is occurred with
the interventions Bicocca in Milan or for the Lingotto in
Turin, it is necessary to consider deindustrialised areas
are spaces that are changing their status from
"problem" to "resource" through strategies of reuse
that allow the rationalization of the existing
infrastructures, the location of new productive activities
and urban equipments able to oppose the urban decline
and to produce quality.
Very often the disused areas create urban spaces that
are perceived by the population as degraded and
dangerous, or because of the lack of stability of
dilapidated structures still present, sometimes putting
at risk the safety of the inhabitants;
These areas are often characterized by a wide number
of infrastrucutres that are connected in efficient way to
the urban context, but often we can’t see a sustainable
use of such resources of mobility that is old,
monofunctional and dominated by the movement on the
wheels.
The considerable importance and dimension of the
phenomenon and the implications for social, urban and
economic re-use of disused involved sites, give to this
areas a strategic role for the redevelopment of the city.