RI.U.SO. 06

contest for the selection of designs and realizations for sustainable urban regeneration

BRIEF

he city still represents, despite its complex contradictions, proof of man’s spectacular ability to shape the environment in which he lives and works. Unfortunately, however, in the last few decades, the quality of urban spaces has worsened drastically, often reaching intolerable levels of irresponsibility towards the citizenry and the environment.

The causes of this phenomenon lie in the numerous contradictions that characterize our times and in the transformations of contemporary society, increasingly faster and more difficult to control. The changes are quantitative but at the same time qualitative. Cities have sometimes grown at vertiginous rates, and controlling the outlying areas and urban spaces has become objectively more difficult.

Bureaucracy has also become increasingly complex, and all too often the focus of attention has been shifted from the architectural project to the normative aspects. The absence of clear and rational public goals and programs and the presence of corruption and irresponsibility have done the rest. The recent past has seen sea changes in the ease with which people around the world can move, the lowering of barriers between countries, an increase in social inequality and, most recently, the economic crisis that besets us.

If, along with all this, we also consider the energy crisis, the diminishing natural resources, pollution and widening social inequality, the picture of the future that emerges leaves no doubt as to the need to define methods and measures that will offer solutions that can guarantee, for all the people of the world, better quality of life, which is largely spent in the public and private spaces of the city.