40
C. Merlini
set of impoverishing objects. To the traditional emptying of large urban 47 equipment and to the 20th-century production dismantling, territorial situations are added
characterized by the obsolescence of smaller and dispersed buildings (Lanzani 2015).
What we are thus called upon to face is therefore not only a quantitatively significant phenomenon, linked to the growing disproportion between the space availability
and concretely actionable demand, which is of course connected to the drastic reduction in public and private resources. It is precisely the specific nature of the artefacts
affected by underutilisation and/or abandonment that must be highlighted. More and
more we are dealing with ordinary and anonymous buildings, essentially devoid both
of value, and of those elements of suggestion that had sometimes the big factories
protagonists of the first phases of urban dismantling.
There are several examples: the condominium incorporated in many urban centres
after World War II; the prefabricated industrial building on the edge of production
areas or along roads that no longer ensure adequate levels of services and appropriate accessibility; the family home in città diffusa settlement in which the system of
expectations and preferences has drastically changed with the generational change;
the second home in tourist areas made less attractive by climate change or by congestion; the shopping centre along market streets that are no longer sufficiently dynamic,
and so on. Buildings that in the phase of the country’s intense growth that is now
behind us have incorporated significant economic and symbolic investments and
now suffering from the crisis. These are artefacts that are poor in terms of architectural and construction quality, poorly placed on the territory, without recognizable
surroundings or a proximity space; in effect the result of urban policies that is not
very context-conscious and of construction processes often conducted in economics.
Aged prematurely, they often witness a drastic reduction in the property value, that
makes their fate very uncertain.
Secondly, it is now evident that large portions of our country disclose increasingly dramatic risk conditions (Fabian and Munarin 2017). It is a territorial fragility
expressed in a variety of ways: hydrogeological instability, deficient maintenance
and static uncertainty of buildings and infrastructures, seismic risk, construction
sites never completed, and air and soil pollution. Recent reports on the state of the
territory measure some of the effects of the long cycle of urbanisation, investigating
the relationships with the broader dynamics of climate and demographic change.
What emerges, beyond the obvious territorial differences, is an increasingly more
fragile country where the very elements that over the long-term have built it main
structure, such as hydrographical and infrastructural networks, fall into a crisis.
Faced with these issues—abandoned building stock and risk—the question is
whether generalized actions of securing the country and urban regeneration are really
viable, or whether there we should not rather consider that this may not always be
possible. There are plentiful reasons: the growing uncertainty of real estate transactions based on replacement building, the difficult management of reuse and recycling
processes, often unsustainable in terms of economic investments, seemingly shape
up a rather uncertain situation (Micelli 2014).
The complexity of the current conditions pushes us, in other words, to advance
different working hypotheses, which consciously take note of territorial situations
C. Merlini
set of impoverishing objects. To the traditional emptying of large urban 47 equipment and to the 20th-century production dismantling, territorial situations are added
characterized by the obsolescence of smaller and dispersed buildings (Lanzani 2015).
What we are thus called upon to face is therefore not only a quantitatively significant phenomenon, linked to the growing disproportion between the space availability
and concretely actionable demand, which is of course connected to the drastic reduction in public and private resources. It is precisely the specific nature of the artefacts
affected by underutilisation and/or abandonment that must be highlighted. More and
more we are dealing with ordinary and anonymous buildings, essentially devoid both
of value, and of those elements of suggestion that had sometimes the big factories
protagonists of the first phases of urban dismantling.
There are several examples: the condominium incorporated in many urban centres
after World War II; the prefabricated industrial building on the edge of production
areas or along roads that no longer ensure adequate levels of services and appropriate accessibility; the family home in città diffusa settlement in which the system of
expectations and preferences has drastically changed with the generational change;
the second home in tourist areas made less attractive by climate change or by congestion; the shopping centre along market streets that are no longer sufficiently dynamic,
and so on. Buildings that in the phase of the country’s intense growth that is now
behind us have incorporated significant economic and symbolic investments and
now suffering from the crisis. These are artefacts that are poor in terms of architectural and construction quality, poorly placed on the territory, without recognizable
surroundings or a proximity space; in effect the result of urban policies that is not
very context-conscious and of construction processes often conducted in economics.
Aged prematurely, they often witness a drastic reduction in the property value, that
makes their fate very uncertain.
Secondly, it is now evident that large portions of our country disclose increasingly dramatic risk conditions (Fabian and Munarin 2017). It is a territorial fragility
expressed in a variety of ways: hydrogeological instability, deficient maintenance
and static uncertainty of buildings and infrastructures, seismic risk, construction
sites never completed, and air and soil pollution. Recent reports on the state of the
territory measure some of the effects of the long cycle of urbanisation, investigating
the relationships with the broader dynamics of climate and demographic change.
What emerges, beyond the obvious territorial differences, is an increasingly more
fragile country where the very elements that over the long-term have built it main
structure, such as hydrographical and infrastructural networks, fall into a crisis.
Faced with these issues—abandoned building stock and risk—the question is
whether generalized actions of securing the country and urban regeneration are really
viable, or whether there we should not rather consider that this may not always be
possible. There are plentiful reasons: the growing uncertainty of real estate transactions based on replacement building, the difficult management of reuse and recycling
processes, often unsustainable in terms of economic investments, seemingly shape
up a rather uncertain situation (Micelli 2014).
The complexity of the current conditions pushes us, in other words, to advance
different working hypotheses, which consciously take note of territorial situations