Abstract
Topics of sustainable urban development and environmental sustainability are worldwide considered as fundamental for every strategy of urban transformation, renewal and regeneration. In particular, urban regenerations are urban re-development programs involving the rebirth or renewal of selected urban areas or district that have faced periods of decline due to compounding and intersecting pressures. The programs cover many aspects of the area to be re-generated such as physical, social and environmental contexts. Re-use of already built up areas and buildings, reduction of the demand for new soils to be developed, increasing of appealing of dense city areas, increasing of social and spatial resilience are among the positive consequences of these programs. However, in the current debate about urban regeneration, few studies have evaluated the real environmental outcomes and effectiveness of regeneration programs in terms of physical variables such as new provided greenspaces, accessibility to public transportation, climate change or seismic risk reduction. This paper proposes a method to quantify the real outcomes and effectiveness of urban regeneration programs with reference to the above mentioned variables. As a real experience of urban planning, the new Local Spatial Plan for the Municipality of Catania, a medium sized city in Southern Italy, is presented. The city is characterised by a high density urban fabric, a general lack of urban greenspaces and high levels of traffic congestion due to a massive use of private transportation. The urban fabric is also very vulnerable to seismic and climate change risks. Among the transformation tools, the new Local spatial plan proposes regeneration actions aimed at the complete regeneration of old and dilapidated areas, not classified as historical heritage and heavily vulnerable to seismic risk. These actions include the complete demolition and reconstruction of these areas within clearly defined boundaries, contributing to minimise soil consumption, maintaining as open public spaces the majority of existing non urbanised areas within the densely built-up settlement. The program of regeneration can dramatically contributes to the reduction of seismic and climate change risk and achieve a general requalification of the urban environment. Starting from this planning experience, this paper focus on the evaluation of the regenerations programs included in the Local Spatial Plan. Regeneration Areas (RAs) have been identified by the municipality as characterized by high level of seismic vulnerability, urban degradation, lack of public services and urban environment quality. For the chosen areas, this study proposes the evaluation of the transformations potentially occurring in the urban context by the proposed regeneration program. The following aspects are evaluated: reduction of risks (in terms of exposition and vulnerability to seismic and climate change related risks) 2 International Scientific Conference GEOBALCANICA 2016 256 mobility (concerning the presence of public means of transports, distance to the transit stops, roads, pedestrian and cycling lanes) accessibility increase (in terms of access to trip attractions) land-use diversity (in terms of number and distribution of different land uses) public spaces and services (in terms of extension and functions) Each of the aforementioned aspects are evaluated by spatial indicators calculated by GIS. All indicators are calculated at different and size increasing units, in order to understand the effect of a single regeneration project and of a number of concurrent projects within the considered geographical units. The geographical units are the RAs and districts. Different combinations of regeneration projects will be thus evaluated to highlight which projects produce the most relevant effects, calculated with the proposed indicators. This will allow the municipality to define scenarios of regeneration priority, in terms of which projects might be financed and implemented firstly because of their higher positive effect on the urban environment. Such scenarios will generate positive effects not only to the single areas to be regenerated but also to wider urban contexts, significantly reducing the urban vulnerability to seismic and climate change risks and at the same time producing more livable and healthy urban environment.
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Published on 01/01/2016
Volume 2016, 2016
DOI: 10.18509/gbp.2016.34
Licence: CC BY-NC-SA license
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