Sostenibilità ecologica e resilienza: la strategia densità/densificazione

Urban form is linked to the causes and intensity of the harmful consequences of very energy-consuming societies, wasteful of natural resources. For this reason, town planning studies have begun to highlight opportunities of strategies based on density and densification. The goal is to reduce mobility, wasting of rare resources, impact on climate change. The pandemic of 2020 has raised perplexities in the reflection of those who fear the “city risk”, with the hypothesis of a return to low-density settlement configurations inherited from the past that lean towards autonomy and self-sufficiency, based on the millenary Italian tradition. Many studies, however, despite the phenomenon in full evolution, contrast the thesis of a greater fragility of dense cities to pandemics. The concern is that the emotion of the moment may slow down the processes of regulatory codification which the scientific community has brought to the attention of political discussion with great difficulty. Density is not a goal. It should rather be framed in the wealth of knowledge and best practices of environmentally healthy and balanced city models as well as socially fair. Although conjugated in different ways in various countries, density is a fundamental global parameter. Therefore, studies and discussions with different emphases are available, together with the need to reach shared conclusions in order to be able to reform the current parameters that assume value as a norm. Although this brief review highlights a substantial disciplinary convergence on the effectiveness of density / densification strategies, the need for further study emerges. It is necessary to clarify and verify all the criteria from which the proposed density thresholds derive with the related underlying ideas of city. Furthermore indicators are necessary to define the correct density value within the identified thresholds