Demolition as a Territorial Reform
Project
Chiara Merlini
Abstract The widespread conditions of obsolescence and risk emerging in many
parts of our country pose new questions to the territorial project and entail a review
of its operational tools. In this sense, even demolition can acquire a new meaning,
soliciting a technical and cultural reflection that has repercussions on future of the
contemporary territory.
Keywords Decline · Demolition · Urban planning · Volumetric transfer · Urbanity
1 Introduction: Decline and Risk
The following notes will argue that the territorial project can usefully reconsider
demolition as its operational tool and that, more generally, the notion itself of demolition must be reconceptualised. The assumption is that the current conditions of our
country push us to consider in new ways potential removal actions of built heritage,
giving them a broad spectrum of meanings and recovering the complexity of a term
too often used in reductive ways (Terranova 1997; Criconia 1998; Nigrelli 2005;
Merlini 2008, 2019).
Two main aspects can be called upon as a reference background, in relation also to a
substantial convergence of representations provided by the latest urban and territorial
studies (Calafati 2014; Munarin and Velo 2016; Fabian and Munarin 2017; De Rossi
2018).
First of all, the issue of decline, which is today, linked in a new way to surplus
built space. In some parts of the country, housing stock is in excess compared to
the people’s request, with the resultant occurrence of underutilization and abandonment phenomena. In particular, a new phenomenology arises in which the peculiar
entanglement between economic crisis and demographic contraction broadens the
C. Merlini (B)
Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering—ABC Department, Politecnico di
Milano, Milan, Italy
e-mail: chiara.merlini@polimi.it
© The Author(s) 2020
S. Della Torre et al. (eds.), Regeneration of the Built Environment
from a Circular Economy Perspective, Research for Development,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33256-3_5
39
Project
Chiara Merlini
Abstract The widespread conditions of obsolescence and risk emerging in many
parts of our country pose new questions to the territorial project and entail a review
of its operational tools. In this sense, even demolition can acquire a new meaning,
soliciting a technical and cultural reflection that has repercussions on future of the
contemporary territory.
Keywords Decline · Demolition · Urban planning · Volumetric transfer · Urbanity
1 Introduction: Decline and Risk
The following notes will argue that the territorial project can usefully reconsider
demolition as its operational tool and that, more generally, the notion itself of demolition must be reconceptualised. The assumption is that the current conditions of our
country push us to consider in new ways potential removal actions of built heritage,
giving them a broad spectrum of meanings and recovering the complexity of a term
too often used in reductive ways (Terranova 1997; Criconia 1998; Nigrelli 2005;
Merlini 2008, 2019).
Two main aspects can be called upon as a reference background, in relation also to a
substantial convergence of representations provided by the latest urban and territorial
studies (Calafati 2014; Munarin and Velo 2016; Fabian and Munarin 2017; De Rossi
2018).
First of all, the issue of decline, which is today, linked in a new way to surplus
built space. In some parts of the country, housing stock is in excess compared to
the people’s request, with the resultant occurrence of underutilization and abandonment phenomena. In particular, a new phenomenology arises in which the peculiar
entanglement between economic crisis and demographic contraction broadens the
C. Merlini (B)
Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering—ABC Department, Politecnico di
Milano, Milan, Italy
e-mail: chiara.merlini@polimi.it
© The Author(s) 2020
S. Della Torre et al. (eds.), Regeneration of the Built Environment
from a Circular Economy Perspective, Research for Development,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33256-3_5
39