1,721,047 research outputs found
Cities at risk: spatial matrices of resilience and security
No full textIn the present ‘age of risk’, urban resilience is certainly a key issue, as the capacity of the system to continue operating in case of exceptional events, and, in ordinary conditions, the flexibility of the network to adapt to functional changes. In recent years, the increased sensitivity to the issue of security seems to reply at an individual scale the concern for resilience. This paper assumes such association, discussing the role of space in providing a physical framework for a safe environment within a resilient settlement. It will be argued that urban resilience and security have their common roots in the way urban spaces are placed and mutually arranged; that a comprehension of the effects of the spatial configuration on resilience and security may support and orient the efforts for enhancing them
NEIL BRENNER (ED.) (2019) New Urban Spaces: Urban Theory and the Scale Question
No full textIl contributo consiste nella recensione del volume "New Urban Spaces: Urban Theory and the Scale Question" di Neil Brenne
I modelli nella stagione della pianificazione debole
No full textNegli ultimi decenni, il tramonto del paradigma razional-comprensivo ed il profondo cambiamento della scienza che va sotto il nome di nuova “scienza della complessità” hanno favorito l’avvento di un’età dell’incertezza, segnata dalla consapevolezza dell’inadeguatezza degli strumenti di conoscenza e dalla mutazione della pianificazione, sempre più lontana dalla tradizionale concezione di un’azione lineare e ideologicamente orientata e sempre più aderente alle forme di un complesso meccanismo sociale auto-organizzato. Ci si chiede se in una simile stagione sia ancora possibile e proponibile un ruolo dei modelli di analisi territoriale che, paradossalmente, i rilevanti sviluppi tecnologici e la sconfinata disponibilità di dati e informazioni renderebbero oggi come non mai concretamente utilizzabili
Le debolezze della pianificazione debole
No full textA fronte della crisi di una simile concezione della pianificazione, «forte», assertiva, in questi ultimi anni da più parti ne è stata proposta e contrapposta una declinazione «debole», finalizzata (o limitata) a definire una cornice normativa di riferimento e normazione per gli interventi di trasformazione del territorio.
Pare in definitiva con ciò prefigurarsi una sorta di possibile «pianificazione senza piani», con l’abbandono di una sua visione teleologica – il piano come azione lineare e ideologicamente orientata verso un assetto predefinito, razionalmente assunto come desiderabile e quindi come obiettivo condiviso di un tracciato procedurale ordinato – a favore di una visione nomologica – mirata ad allestire un sistema di norme tese a regolamentare lo sviluppo e l’organizzazione degli insediamenti mediante la perimetrazione del fattibile e la proibizione di tutto ciò che ne resta escluso. Il contributo costituisce una riflessione sulle potenzialità e le criticità di un simile approcci
When cities lose their tail: sprawl as a configurational matter
Full text linkTwo main theses and a more general one underlie this paper.
The first thesis is that the distribution of some of the configurational indices narrowly approximates a Paretian trend, thus appearing as a power function of their rank: the distinguishing feature, in fact, is not only the presence of a few number of lines with huge choice values, but also that those few lines actually coexist with a large number of scarcely chosen ones; number that increases as values decrease, what appears simply defying a bell curve. The absence of a peak in a power law distribution implies that there is no such a thing as a scale: we observe a continuous hierarchy of lines, spanning from those with highest values, followed by some less frequently present in the connection paths, then by dozen that are even more neglected, up to the more and more numerous deserted ones, so as to conform the urban grid to a fractal structure, according to that power law distribution that was acknowledged as a ‘patent signature’ of self-organization in complex systems (Jiang, 2007; Barabasi, 2014). Yet, if this law actually appears working well for the smallest ranks, it doesn’t fit the same for biggest ranks: a better fitting can be obtained multiplying the power law by an exponential function, thus providing the Zipf law with a smooth exponential cut-off.
The second thesis is that such distribution decays in sprawled settlements, whose growth is actually characterized by low density, scattered urbanization and leapfrogging: here the results of some case studies indicate the presence of an abrupt cut-off in the distribution of choice, sharply breaking its tail; the more dispersed is actually the external development, the sooner and more steeply the tail appears to decay. In such cases a double slope seems to arise, so that the distribution of choice almost appears as a two regimes power law, composed by the initial Zipf law and followed by a steep sloping decay.
A more general thesis gathers the two above: it will be argued that sprawl is mainly a relational phenomenon. Commonly perceived in the forms of traffic congestion, lack of pedestrian movement, depletion of inner cores, external concentration of shopping centres, absence of functional variety, landscape desolation, loss of local identities: all issues whose primary cause can be found in the configurational state, according to a clear logic and in measurable terms. Whose distinctive hallmark seems to be, among others, just the sharp cut-off of the tail in the distribution of choice, which materializes the breaking in the scale invariance of the system.
The findings of several case studies seem to validate the thesis above: most of the phenomena that for decades now have been feeding the debate on urban sprawl appear anything but the predictable effects of the changes of spatial relationships caused by the suburbanization; whose clue can be detected in the slope of this function, the threshold from which it starts, the sharpness of the fracture with the initial curve. What will also provide some guidelines for rectifying the fracture and recomposing the tail
Cities at the time of Covid; and after
No full textThis introduction frames the contributions here collected within the broad discussion that has arisen in recent months on the territorial issues related to the pandemic. Some specific topics are provided here with new insights: the territorial features that have influenced the intensity of the pandemic, the role of density and concentration of the virus’ spread, the impact of pandemic and restriction measures on mobility, the extent to which the effects of this pandemic are likely to affect cities over the long term. Such a discussion therefore encompasses the whole territorial question of the pandemic, aiming at deepening knowledge on the conditions that have nourished it; and casting a glance on the likely conditions in the foreseeable future
L'albero fragile dello sprawl. La diffusione urbana come un tema configurazionale
No full textDue tesi animano questa ricerca sullo sprawl urbano, una vasta questione, assai discussa ma ancora incerta su alcuni aspetti essenziali. La prima: lo sprawl è una questione di relazioni spaziali, in quanto è proprio l’assetto relazionale di un sistema ciò che consente di identificare lo sprawl e che fornisce gli strumenti per apprezzarlo. La seconda è che lo sprawl, nell’indebolirne le relazioni spaziali, rende l’intero insediamento più vulnerabile e fragile. Una ricerca empirica è qui mirata ad analizzare la città diffusa, al fine di estrarre le proprietà relazionali sottese alla sua organizzazione spaziale, così da poterle comparare a quelle di un insediamen- to compatto e da evidenziare le differenze, utili a definire il significato e la natura essenziale dello sprawl. Implicitamente suggerendo le linee di indirizzo per ogni intervento di governo delle aree suburbane
Prospettive della modellistica nell'età dell'incertezza
No full textNegli ultimi decenni, il tramonto del paradigma razional-comprensivo ed il profondo cambiamento della scienza che va sotto il nome di nuova “scienza della complessità” hanno favorito l’avvento di un’età dell’incertezza, segnata dalla consapevolezza dell’inadeguatezza degli strumenti di conoscenza e dalla mutazione della pianificazione, sempre più lontana dalla tradizionale concezione di un’azione lineare e ideologicamente orientata e sempre più aderente alle forme di un complesso meccanismo sociale auto-organizzato. Ci si chiede se in una simile stagione sia ancora possibile e proponibile un ruolo dei modelli di analisi territoriale che, paradossalmente, i rilevanti sviluppi tecnologici e la sconfinata disponibilità di dati e informazioni renderebbero oggi come non mai concretamente utilizzabili
Linking space syntax and cluster analysis to design and plan temporary housing neighborhoods: A taxonomy of sites in Norcia
No full textBuilding Back Better in disaster recovery and reconstruction requires the adoption of integrated and context-sensitive approaches to the design and planning of Temporary Housing (TH) sites. However, there is a lack of methods for enabling successful outcomes in housing assistance provision, e.g. via a quantitative evaluation of the social-spatial qualities of the sites, and supporting the negotiation of urban design changes and the development of a coherent end-of-life plan. The paper aims to uncover formalanalogies between different TH sites’ layouts by linking Space Syntax and Clustering analysis within an unsupervised machine-learning pipeline, which can consider a virtually unlimited number of configurational qualities and how they vary across differentscales. The potential benefits of the proposal are illustrated through its application to the study of 20 TH sites built in Norcia after the 2016-2017 Central Italy earthquakes. The results indicate the proposal enables distinguishing different types of spatial arrangements according to local strategic priorities and suggest the opportunity to extend the study in the future to set up rules of thumb for the design of site layout options. The paper ultimately aims to equip local administrations and contracted professionals with a much-needed tool to develop and rapidly audit proposals for temporary neighbourhoods oriented at enhancing the resilience of disaster-affected towns both in the medium and in the long term
A daunting survey about the management of environmental information in Italian ports
Full text linkThe environmental performance of shipping and port sectors have become increasingly important and now affect the reputation of the port areas and thus the social acceptability of their activities and development. Despite this commitment, the environmental information collected by the Port Authorities is rarely managed by geographic information systems. The paper presents data from a survey carried out on the Italian port authorities testifying a huge backwardness in the collection and organization of data, even in cases where an EMS is actually operating. This makes it impossible to use simple or complex decision support systems in the processes of spatial planning or strategic environmental assessment
- …
