RE-URBANIZING THE PERIFERIES
GABRIELE TAGLIAVENTI
Periferia, suburbs, vorort, banlieu, several different words for explaining
the same concept, which has to do with the main social and urbanistic
disease of the XXth century. A disease which seemed to be impossible to
cure and without any antidote or efficient medicine until a few years ago,
while it happens to be now -this is the news- suitable for a successful
prevention and cure: the urban periphery, that the French writer and
president of the Academie Goncourt, François Nourisier, described as a
"double caricature of both the city and the countryside". It is now
possible to cure the disease, the terrible virus that hits and destroys the
natural landscape, like a true metaphor or simulacrum for many illnesses of
this contemporary society, and also ruins the urban spaces, built through
centuries by the Western civilization, where the quality of life is
directly linked to the quality of both Architecture and built environment.
It is now possible to cure the disease, as the experiences collected in
this dossier show, besides many other experiences hopefully currently
undertaken all around the world in this present time. Indeed, we know that
we can cure the disease only if we have, as true prerequisite, an open view
on the overall situation, a clear understanding of the causes and, most
relevantly, a clever strategy to deal with.
Leon Krier was one among the first who explained to us, through a series of
precise analytical studies, the reasons why the Modernist Town Planning has
produced the phenomenon of the suburbs, by its being based upon strict
functionalist and zoning principles. The urban periphery, thus, is not
intended as a particular geographical condition connected with the idea of
living outside the center, as it was a strange destiny affecting people
through a mysterious mathematical law when a settlement is developed in a
"peripheral" position in relation to an existing urban center. Therefore,
the matter has not to do with geography but with the structure of the town.
The English term "su-urb", as well as the French one "ban-lieu", could be
very helpful in eliminating the misunderstanding that the use of the
Italian term "periphery" - a simple geographical notion - might produce.
The main problem of urban peripheral areas is based on the fact that they
are planned by the very beginning as something completely different from
the city - urbs - , something inferior to the city - that is sub-urbs -,
incapable to define any particular place: hence, the ban-lieu. It is thus
evident that, in order to solve the problem, it is necessary to think,
plan, and build settlements in terms of cities and urban tradition. It is
mandatory to eliminate the dangerous principle of the physical separation
of urban activities - the famous zoning used in so many Communal
Masterplans - and to substitute it with a multifunctional planning process
which should be able to lead to a true mix of functions, all present on
the same place, in the same time. Only urban mix, in fact, could
guarantee an adequate standard of vitality in urban life and avoid that
segregation which René Schoonbrodt has several times advised us to fight. A
true mix of urban functions is absolutely mandatory, but not
self-sufficient to build up a city which might be worth compare with the
cities of the past, and to create a truly livable and economically
sustainable urban environment. What is then absolutely needed is a very
particular form, which is possible to define, using again a kriesque
terminology, as a "network of streets, squares and blocks", which
represents in fact a very simple set of rules, but able to generate
-through the infinite possibilities in combining architectural elements,
urban types, cultural and geographical influences- thousands of cities, all
different from each other, thousands of urban spaces, all different but
recognizable as belonging to the same family, the same species: the urban
one. Streets, squares, blocks and urban quarter are the physical expressions of this spatial aggregate, the original matrix for the city development.
If today this is all clear, how then could we deal with these immense urban
peripheral areas? The Green Book for the Urban Environment, published in
1991 by the European Union, indicates the modern urban periphery as the
main field for redevelopment actions in the next years, as "territories
without any quality, monotonous and boring, which put forward a stick siege
to the structured parts of the city and often represent tanks of violence,
drugs and social segregation". In the next years a big part of UE projects
and financements will regard these two priority issues: the abandoned areas
and the suburbs. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the new cities
and villages designed and built by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk
demostrate after the first successful experience of Seaside that today, in
this late XXth century, a suitable economical alternative to the
construction of suburbs does exist. Even Duany and Plater-Zyberk's
solutions require indeed a series of precise conditions, so that the
project could reach the desired quality standard. This means that an
Urban Code should be necessarily followed when creating new villages and
towns. The Urban Code should be a simple document that establishes clear
relationships among plans, sections and elevations of buildings and urban
spaces: a relationship, in other words, between the distributive-functional
and the typomorphological features of the new buildings. In addition to
that, the spatial organization of the new cities should follow a fixed
scheme which is derived from a deep analysis of the typomorphological
features of the traditional American cities and the best examples of
European ones: the Traditional Neighborhood Development Ordinance (TND).
Again, what can we do for the suburbs? First of all, transform them into
true cities, which means urbanizing them by introducing some elements of
urbanity within a sub-urban and un-shaped context. In some cases, we have
to make clear that demolition is the only way to follow. The Modernist
suburbs, in fact, are often built in such a way that any kind of
re-development and creation of a new urban quarter is virtually impossible.
In these cases, the physical and morphological conditions, due to the
obsolescence of the built fabric, make economically illogic the process of
renewal and integration within a new urban system of streets, squares and
blocks. The experience of the Municipality of Plessis-Robinson in the
periphery of Paris is particularly interesting. At the beginning of the 90s
the public administrators decided to start a global transformation of the
urban agglomeration through the construction of a new traditional center
connected to new social housing developments designed as a true urban
quarter. Another strategy which could be followed in the process of
urbanizing suburbs is the partial demolition of the existing buildings and
the preservation of the buildings that are suitable to be integrated within
the new urban quarter.
The case of Bruay-le-Buissiere is a significant example of this attitude.
Built as a mining town in the late XIXth century
in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais region, it includes the Cite du Nouveau Monde
-a typical dormitory suburb for the workers of the local mines- which is
composed of 500 residential units arranged in rows of terraced houses. in
1979 the crisis of mining economy led to a global re-thinking of the
economic and urbanistic pattern of this so typical urban periphery. A first
Masterplan designed in 1988 by Rob Krier and the Atelier Atlante envisaged
the fundamental principles of a radical urbanization of this dormitory
suburb. The residential rows were cut in order to create a new urban
network of streets, square and blocks. New public buildings were then
designed to be built in very strategic positions within the urban fabric so
that they could act as landmarks for a clear urban hierarchy. Thus, a new
city is slightly appearing through the demolition of most of the
residential rows and the redevelopment of the preserved ones. Both new and
renovated buildings mantain the original architectural features, that are
strongly influenced by the use of bricks for the external façades. The
construction of the first three new squares started in 1993, including also
71 social housing apartments and a new medical center for elder people:
Place Lafayette, Place Rochambeau and Place Suffren. A second operation of
36 new housing units was undertaken in 1994 by the Nord and Pas-de-Calais
Agency for Social Housing - the HLM -, to complete the main axis of the
quarter - the Avenue du Canada - and open the first of the new transversal
streets which have to create the new streets network the Rue d'Arcadie -,
including also the construction of a series of public facilities such as
the social pharmacy, the site of the Workers' Health Care Centre and the
Maison du Temps Libre. In Italy, where the famous anchorman Michele Santoro
opened the 1993 television series "Il Rosso e il Nero" (The Red and the
Black) with a representation of the social and political decay due to the
"Tangentopoli" affair through a view of the Italian suburbs, several
initiatives have been already undertaken starting a process of urbanization
of suburbs because of their powerful symbolic value. Beyond Leon Krier's
Masterplan for the Redevelopment of the FIAT-Fondiaria area in the
periphery of Florence (see A&C N. 1), the 1st Laboratory for the European
City, organized at the University of Bologna by the A Vision of Europe
Committee within the UE Kaleidoscope program, has produced a Masterplan for
the transformation of the suburban areas in Bologna's metropolitan area
into a system of towns, villages and "borghi", all well geographically
defined and easily recognizable through the presence of a traditional
urban center and a proper limit. Instead of continuing the consumption of
the countryside by adding new sparse settlements, the Masterplan elaborated
in collaboration with the Emilia-Romagna Region promotes the densification
of a series of "urban redevelopment areas" where one could concentrate all
the new building activities by using a precise Urban Code which calls for
the creation of new urban public spaces giving a clear identity and
character to the suburbs. The following examples - Paris-Plessis Robinson,
Olot, Berlin-Potsdam demonstrate how the project of urbanization of suburbs
has already abandoned the polemic aspects of the early 80s and is currently
becoming the main challenge for the Western world approaching the next
Millennium.
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