EUROPAN 9. Sustainable city and new public spaces. Reggio Emilia: green carpettown

The study area returns the image of a plain territory, with a strong agricultural presence and with a chromatic and plant geography uniform in which the extra- urban streets layout is probably inadequate to support the new urbanisation and today not able to hold together the functional excellences, isolated nucleuses now not really linked among them. Magnificent and oversize the bridge drawn by Calatrava fills the lack of reference points in the landscape; it regulates proportions and distances of a territory otherwise homogeneous and isotropic. The project area, touched in west side by via Gramsci and Secchia mill run and crossed in the middle by the extra- urban railway, ended by the Rodano torrent, is a zip between town centre and neighbouring fractions and has the potentiality to turn into a recognizable and attractive place for all the round. We interpret the main principles of the ecological town: sustainable is a livable city based on the human scale and needs, in which the concept of proximity has a great value, in which there is a strong and visible interaction between green and built, where the right to the sun, the exploitation of the wind for the salubriousness of the indoor and open spaces air is a date of the project, where the use of renewable energy sources , the optimization of the water cycle, the use of local and eco- compatible materials is a made choice. Our plan for the new Green carpettown is based on the exploitation of the natural resources, on to bring in surface the Roman equilateral grate founded on the actus (35,568 mt.) to give direction to the expansion to north east, on systems of flexible buildings, on the assertiveness wish to escape to a sectorial function intervention with the aim to configure a sort of microcosm where the interaction among to live safe, to work, to have a good time, to do culture, to meet is given in the day and night hours. We draw a settlement where to get together and to communicate, where facilities - we conceive in a district scale- they are also able to attract the inhabitants of the surrounding zones and to create new occasions for a territory that lives between the hard winter fogs and the summer heat between the beauty of the agricultural landscape and the repetitive provincial life. Fil rouge of our proposal is the attention to the different categories of users with particular reference to the modus vivendi of the local population, to the strong presence of small and middle entrepreneurial tissue, to the presence of a lot of strangers, and with a special look to young people. The will of the local administration to define the area around the Tav station as the ring of connection among the different poles of excellence and to create in it the door of access to the city, pushes the project toward a new concept of movement and connection. We assign greater section and strength to the small street jet present at east touching the project area; it connects with the town centre, and it will have the role to direct the urban expansion toward the north and east areas. We allow to race in the middle of the area the railroad, we draw new driveways and parking areas, and, overall, we draw bicycle and pedestrian path to connect the territory. We allow to live, around 340.000 sm of country, using this green carpet (410.000 sm. is the surface of all the project area ) as element of linking in the built plan. We have worked assembling the built in bands and planned the green as diversified and mutable subject. The green produces, protects, adorns, improves the quality of the air, among built and roads.The landscape valorisation, that has as main point of interest the Rodano torrent it becomes the motor of an intervention that finds its sources of inspiration in the quality of build and in the sustainable life style trying to manage the impact of network connection by diffusing it into the surrounding area in order to create a district.