The life-cycle of the city: a morphological perspective

Over the last decade, we have been witnessing the progressive weakening of the so-called "Network City", indented as the sheer embodiment of the globalization driving forces. This phenomenon mostly occurred because of the worldwide crisis of finance, which was the propellant of the mentioned urban model. It progressively delivered an increasing amount of waiting lands and building vacancies over the territory. Emptiness suddenly appeared as the most preeminent evidence of the market deficiency, replacing the well known "culture of congestion". Recycling seems to be the immediate reaction to the building standstill and it is nowadays widely accepted as the most promising strategy to face the crisis of the city, especially within Europe. This statement brings us to deeply reflect on the city in the perspective of its life-cycle. In that respect it becomes fundamental to reconsider the forerunning contribution of Urban Morphology and Building Typology. In fact this discipline, since the second half of the '50 of the XX century, because of the necessity to reconstruct Europe after the Second World War, was pioneering the necessity to read the Form of the city beyond any ideological prejudice, superseding the Modern approach. As a consequence of this attitude, the city was even more intended as a "manufact" constantly transformed through the different historical epochs. This paper intends to offer a complete reflection on these premises to define appropriate operative devices in the contemporary condition to build a promising future for our cities.

Ripensare il progetto della città in rapporto al suo ciclo di vita segnifica riabilitare il senso profondo di una nuova “antropologia del territorio”, ovvero di una comprensione delle ragioni dell’umanità, e dei suoi molteplici rappresentanti, i cui protagonista ritrovato sia, finalmente il progetto di architettura. L’originalità della tesi viene presentata e discussa nel testo.