The Sustainable City
Visions of future cities to illustrate the new and vital asset of architecture: Quality
Pier Giorgio Turi
photo Maurizio Pisani
First let’s take a look at the figures: 92 experts from 10 countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Venezuela, Colombia, Great Britain, Belgium, Algeria and China), divided into five interdisciplinary groups led by 10 tutors, with the help of nine members of the international advisory board and 53 experts. The workshop, which was held in Turin in February, was the occasion for an intense week of comparing shared experiences to “transmit” visions of the city of the future, with the values of environmental quality and quality of life being the criteria for development. Planners tackled a vast, complex study area on a metropolitan scale, coming up with integrated projects which addressed the urban landscape, the use of resources and energy, mobility, transformation timelines, physical and digital infrastructure and the quality of urban space and its architecture.
to contribute to a cultural change towards “thinking and acting in a sustainable way”, as a way forward to a more balanced form of development in our cities
Now let’s take a step back: the project “Conveying the sustainable city” came about as an important pact between institutions in order to tackle the issue of urban sustainability in the unique setting of the Torino 2008 23rd UIA World Congress. It translated into a protocol agreement underwritten by numerous public and private players, implementing the shared intention to contribute to a cultural change towards “thinking and acting in a sustainable way”, as a way forward to a more balanced form of development in our cities.
This process, which is now viewed as ineluctable, requires a wide basis of shared principles and knowledge, indispensable in terms of outlining strategies and identifying concrete short, medium and long term actions, where it is of vital importance both to address the issue of quality of life in urban areas, and to think of new ways of constructing cities, taking on the complexity of integrated environmental projects.
With regards to these objectives, project management was entrusted to a large international advisory board comprising experts from Italy, Holland, Great Britain, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Canada and Greece; a multidisciplinary work group which made possible the international planning workshop regarding the transformation area “Basse di Stura” north of Turin (over 540 hectares). The advisory board also set about organizing a session of the Congress dedicated to the issue of sustainable urban transformations: both of these initiatives were objectives set out in the protocol agreement.
The five “visions” produced will be presented in the session “Transmitting the sustainable city” on 2 July, the day of the Congress dedicated to Hope. In the same context there will be a round table session exploring the complex relationship between urban development and environmental sustainability, with the participation of institutions, cities and architects involved in designing and constructing contemporary cities in a sustainable way.
Those involved in this encounter include Fabrizio Barbaso, who will be presenting the Covenant of Mayors launched by the European Commission to get cities to reduce their CO2 emissions by over 20% by 2020; Jaime Lerner, talking about the Brazilian case of Curitiba; Mario Cucinella, presenting the initiative “Transmitting the sustainable city”; and Thomas Herzog and Michael Hopkins reflecting on the changes in design approaches since 1996, the year they and 40 other European architects signed the “Solar Energy Charter”.
