60
E. Mussinelli et al.
more recurrent in our territories, with negative impacts also on urban environments
and health. Flooding and urban heat islands sum their negativities to other issues,
such as air, soil and water pollution, land-use change and soil sealing increasing the
criticalities of life in urban areas.
The progressive awareness of these increasingly evident criticalities pushed the
European Union to develop new policies and actions, initially aimed at urban sustainability,
1 later at urban resilience
2 and now stressing the role of urban robustness.
3
Within the broad panel of policies and instruments that can now be used to combat
the deterioration of urban environmental quality and climate change, in recent years,
the so-called nature-based solutions (NBS) have emerged. NBS are a set of technical
solutions based on natural resources (vegetation, water, soil, etc.) to regenerate buildings and urban spaces in a resilient key, even with the formation of real “ecological
corridors” (green and blue infrastructures GBI) able to reconstitute, through suitable
reconnections, the continuity of environmental systems. NBS and GBI are in fact configured as multifunctional tools, capable of generating environmental and economic
benefits, of delivering ecosystem services and, at the same time, of contributing to
the formation of more functional, comfortable and healthy built spaces.
2 The Role of Public Spaces: Environment and Life Quality
Hence, the interest of this research in exploring the applicative potential of these
solutions in relation to a specific dimension of the city, that of public spaces, which—
for various reasons and for several years now—is experiencing a process of significant
delay (Mussinelli 2018).
1 “According to the European Commission (2006), urban sustainability is defined as the challenge
to ‘solve both the problems experienced within cities and the problems caused by cities’, recognizing
that cities themselves provide many potential solutions” moreover “sustainable urbanization is a
dynamic process that combines environmental, social, economic and political-institutional sustainability. It brings together urban and rural areas, encompassing the full range of human settlements
from village to town to city to metropolis, with links on national and global level” (Shen et al. 2011:
18).
2 “Urban resilience is the capacity of urban systems, communities, individuals, organisations and
businesses to recover, maintain their function and thrive in the aftermath of a shock or a stress,
regardless of its impact, frequency or magnitude” (Urban Resilience. A concept for co-creating
cities of the future URBACT Resilient Europe).
3 “Robust systems include well-conceived, constructed and managed physical assets, so that they
can withstand the impacts of hazardous events without significant damage or loss of function. Robust
design anticipates potential failures in systems, making provision to ensure failure is predictable,
safe, and not disproportionate to the cause. Over-reliance on a single asset, cascading failure and
design thresholds that might lead to catastrophic collapse if exceeded are actively avoided” (The
Rockefeller Foundation and Arup 2014:5).
E. Mussinelli et al.
more recurrent in our territories, with negative impacts also on urban environments
and health. Flooding and urban heat islands sum their negativities to other issues,
such as air, soil and water pollution, land-use change and soil sealing increasing the
criticalities of life in urban areas.
The progressive awareness of these increasingly evident criticalities pushed the
European Union to develop new policies and actions, initially aimed at urban sustainability,
1 later at urban resilience
2 and now stressing the role of urban robustness.
3
Within the broad panel of policies and instruments that can now be used to combat
the deterioration of urban environmental quality and climate change, in recent years,
the so-called nature-based solutions (NBS) have emerged. NBS are a set of technical
solutions based on natural resources (vegetation, water, soil, etc.) to regenerate buildings and urban spaces in a resilient key, even with the formation of real “ecological
corridors” (green and blue infrastructures GBI) able to reconstitute, through suitable
reconnections, the continuity of environmental systems. NBS and GBI are in fact configured as multifunctional tools, capable of generating environmental and economic
benefits, of delivering ecosystem services and, at the same time, of contributing to
the formation of more functional, comfortable and healthy built spaces.
2 The Role of Public Spaces: Environment and Life Quality
Hence, the interest of this research in exploring the applicative potential of these
solutions in relation to a specific dimension of the city, that of public spaces, which—
for various reasons and for several years now—is experiencing a process of significant
delay (Mussinelli 2018).
1 “According to the European Commission (2006), urban sustainability is defined as the challenge
to ‘solve both the problems experienced within cities and the problems caused by cities’, recognizing
that cities themselves provide many potential solutions” moreover “sustainable urbanization is a
dynamic process that combines environmental, social, economic and political-institutional sustainability. It brings together urban and rural areas, encompassing the full range of human settlements
from village to town to city to metropolis, with links on national and global level” (Shen et al. 2011:
18).
2 “Urban resilience is the capacity of urban systems, communities, individuals, organisations and
businesses to recover, maintain their function and thrive in the aftermath of a shock or a stress,
regardless of its impact, frequency or magnitude” (Urban Resilience. A concept for co-creating
cities of the future URBACT Resilient Europe).
3 “Robust systems include well-conceived, constructed and managed physical assets, so that they
can withstand the impacts of hazardous events without significant damage or loss of function. Robust
design anticipates potential failures in systems, making provision to ensure failure is predictable,
safe, and not disproportionate to the cause. Over-reliance on a single asset, cascading failure and
design thresholds that might lead to catastrophic collapse if exceeded are actively avoided” (The
Rockefeller Foundation and Arup 2014:5).