PRIN 2022 CALL. DECREE NO. 104 OF 2 FEBRUARY 2022
PROJECT TITLE: Reloading city: a new systemic approach to the regeneration of the city and the territory
CUP CODE D53D23011000006
Budget: € 38.300
U.R. Coordinator: Bisciglia Sergio
Other Research Units or any Sub-Units:
University of Perugia (Prof. Annalisa Giusti-P.I.)
University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”
University of L’Aquila
University of Sassari
Brief project description
The research topic is urban regeneration, as a development strategy for the country and as a tool for recovery from the post-pandemic crisis. The reason—and at the same time the objective—of the research is to build pathways capable of (re)orienting the approach to urban regeneration, overcoming the sectoral dimension and proposing an investigation that is not only multidisciplinary but also multi-scalar.
Purpose
The research draws on three aspects: 1. restoring the central role of the public sector in governing regeneration processes, as an entity capable of fostering projects and guiding private-sector initiatives; 2. rethinking regeneration starting from the public city, understood both as a space and as a residential environment; 3. recovering the systemic nature of urban planning, moving beyond the dichotomy between city centres and peripheries, along with the sector-specific and largely ineffective technical, legal and regulatory tools associated with it.
The Bari Unit interpreted the themes addressed by the other research units—the theme of housing and the role of integration and social inclusion of public spaces and facilities—based mainly on the analysis of regulatory instruments and their translation into specific actions, appropriately reclassified. Although considering the Bari case study, the main field of investigation was its metropolitan area.
Expected results
Reconstituting an integrated dimension of regeneration, which does not translate into the homogenization and uniformity of instruments and which renounces a dichotomous reading between “local development” and “urban regeneration”, in favour of new parameters more suited to the complexity of the critical issues identified. This starting from a mapping of the types of regeneration and their differentiated distribution within the metropolitan area.
Achieved results
The results at the analytical level concerned the definition of the fields of production and implementation of regeneration policies and actions, also according to the territory’s governance levels. With respect to the initial framework assumed and proposed in the research project, it emerged a) on the one hand, an expansion of the aforementioned fields of production and implementation, including not only urban regeneration policies, characterized by greater application rigidity, but also municipal actions attributable to welfare, cultural and youth policies, considered more effective in terms of consensus and immediate implementation and b) on the other hand, a repositioning of the institutional and social actors involved in these fields, marked by a downsizing of the role of economic stakeholders compared with initial expectations and by a greater centrality of public actors, in particular the Region and Municipalities, thus orienting the research towards a critical analysis of intersectoral dynamics and the implementation mechanisms of urban regeneration, often rigidified into models and practices uncritically borrowed from other contexts.
