Imparare dal passato : la componente ecologica della rigenerazione urbana

Abstract

This paper, starting from the declinations of resilience, considers the urgent need for a trans-scalar and trans-disciplinary approach to remedy the errors of the past and to prevent the effects of global climate change. At an urban scale, vegetation performs ecosystem services aimed at urban resilience, thus contributing to public health and increasing the quality of life of citizens. In the current catastrophic effects of climate change, we reflected on the results of planning choices made in the past following natural events of extraordinary intensity and importance. These choices are often caused by urgency. And we know that today are much worse than the events themselves, having triggered, downstream, other problems of a hydrogeological type but also critical environmental and social issues. The case study concerns a coastal town in Sicily which, following a catastrophic flood, reacted in the 1970s by abandoning the heart of the historic city and planning in an anonymous way where it should not have been urbanized. The contribution illustrates the possible solutions in terms of urban policies for a regeneration that looks at the ecological-environmental component. This component has repercussions also from the social point of view. In particular, it is expected to arrive at a draft methodology which, taking advantage of the different declinations to resilience known in the literature and the good practices already tested, triggers strategies, projects and policies inspired by sustainability criteria that lead to planning approaches aimed at reducing the harmful effects of human action on the environment.