IN TRANSIZIONE. LA RE-INVENZIONE DELLA FRINGE PER UNA CRESCITA DIFFERENTE

The urban fringe, mainly built after the Second World War, is an area in transition, with a strong potential for reconversion and growth, interpreted as the redevelopment of systematic values and qualities, going beyond urban growth connected to land consumption. Due to its dimension, to its proximity to urban cores, to its original combination of built environment and open space, the urban belts of the post-metropolitan model encompass the best of urban and rural patterns. These zones offer more services and are more connected to the city centre than the sprawl areas; they have more permeable and open spaces, compared to the car-based, dense parts of our cities; they testify of a coexistence between contrasts, between different functions and uses, in hybrid balances, not yet fully analyzed. "Sub>urban. Re-inventing the fringe" is a network of nine European cities, born as part of the European URBACT III program, consisting in the development of Local Action Plans, through participatory processes and transnational exchanges. In particular, the cities of Casoria (Italy), Antwerp (Belgium) and the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (Spain) worked on their own fringe, on the basis of two levels of actions: a strategic level and a tactical one, based on experimentation in pilot projects, through experimental coalitions between public and private actors. The urban fringe areas have been reinterpreted starting from principles of: technical-economic feasibility and sustainability of urban transformations, social cohesion and inclusion, community empowerment, soft mobility, attention to housing, well-being and health. Thus the network envisioned an alternative growth paradigm, which starts from the regeneration of the built environment, including operations of densification and diversification of uses, and then will reinterpret the meaning and identity of entire areas.