Territorial opportunities for urban requalification practices

Abstract

The urbanization processes of the last thirty years show a profoundly changed urban framework related to the functional and formal orders of the previous periods. The territorial organization of social and economic activities, in Italy, is affected by the contextual phenomenon of urban sprawling and “territorial coalescence” (Calafati, 2009). As consolidated as stable forms of urban growth over the last two decades, these phenomena have occurred in path-dependent processes, starting from specific conditions and actions that are «unintended and deliberated, but that are tolerated as minor evils, in the absence of alternatives, or as a result of force relations that have prevailed over every deliberate and programmed regulatory instance» (Donolo, 2011:189, translated by the author). These urban changes are generically referable to a contest of “urban regionalization”, and show some relevant instances of “re-shaping” and “re-qualification”. In facing the territorial dimension reached by the urban condition, some traditional criteria of analysis and interpretation – strictly focused on a basic and dichotomic “lecture” of urban “facts” – must be overcome.