It is against this backdrop that the research report Valentino Masterplan was presented to the City, offering a strategic analysis of the role of the river park and, more generally, of the relationship between the network of green spaces and the urban river infrastructure. The research outlined a vision for the renewal of Turin’s city centres, suggesting – in line with the transformations of the 1990s linked to the Spina Centrale – a new phase of regeneration based on the enhancement of the River Po, its parks and the cultural heritage associated with it.

The study formed part of the policies promoted by the Department for Urban Care, Public Green Spaces, Parks and Rivers, building on initiatives relating to the regeneration of the riverbanks and the restoration of navigability on the River Po. This gave rise to the opportunity to extend the study to the entire Turin river system, with the aim of constructing an integrated and complementary narrative of urban centres, capable of bringing together urban and extra-urban green spaces and enhancing the ‘comb-like’ structure of the watercourses and adjacent areas.

The project was formalised in a memorandum of understanding between the Polytechnic University of Turin and the Compagnia di San Paolo, which supported its implementation. This gave rise to a two-year work programme, based on close collaboration between the municipal administration and the research group, under the supervision of the Foundation. This report sets out its outcomes, content and prospects.

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Final seminar of the project BRUalinu – Well-being and Urban Regeneration supported by Creative Living Lab – Edition 5, promoted by the General Directorate for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture.

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The first phase of work, developed by FULL, consists of the activities of territorial diagnosis and analysis, preparatory to the elaboration of a design vision and aimed at highlighting criticalities, distinctive elements and design opportunities offered by the context.

The Parco dell’Arrivore is a site that eludes univocal judgement and needs to be read at different scales, in its dual role as a green lung in the northern Turin suburbs but also as a node in a wider network of river parks. The overlapping of agricultural, then industrial and mining activities, up to more recent occasional uses, often improper or illicit, has left a palimpsest of signs and legacies that contribute to characterise its complexity. Despite its criticalities, the Arrivore shows great ecological and landscape potential, due to its strategic position and the variety of atmospheres it offers. The main project directions identified include enhancing the park’s identity, improving accessibility, and environmental redevelopment through the experimental application of Nature-Based Solutions, with the aim of promoting sustainable regeneration and the gradual transformation of the site.

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Starting from the development of an analytical framework for Turin’s river system, the project Turin and its rivers aims to identify transformation scenarios for the city’s river contexts. These scenarios are intended as a tool capable of revealing planning opportunities, translating them into an overview capable of guiding coherent and coordinated development actions.

The research has three macro-goals:

(1) To bring attention back to the city’s natural heritage, also understood as a powerful device to respond to the effects of climate change;

(2) To structure and promote a new narrative for the city, through the systemic description and valorisation of the components that characterise each river;

(3) To provide an interpretative framework useful for the renewal of planning and development practices in the City of Turin.

The research deals with a complex topic, addressing the relationship between built areas and river context, the ecosystem dimension and the definition of transformative scenarios.

The research assumes that Turin’s four rivers, understood as ecological corridors connecting the city to the metropolitan area, can play a crucial role in combating climate change and improving the quality of urban life. The study investigates the potential of the ‘Blue Comb’ with the aim of defining a strategy to strengthen its ecological, social and economic role. Through three interpretative lenses — ecological city, inherited city and city of leisure — the research identifies a sequence of actions to reactivate the untapped potential of the river corridors and renew the relationship between the urban core and the metropolitan area.

The proposed framework of interventions enhances and renews existing areas that have so far played a marginal role in urban policies, assigning each one a function consistent with its characteristics and capable of generating positive effects on the entire city. The research ultimately translates into nine strategic projections, which redefine the narrative of Turin’s four rivers and identify new urban centres, reaffirming the link between natural resources, the built landscape and the development of the city in its relationship with the surrounding area.

Throughout Turin’s urban history, rivers have played multiple and changing roles: a strategic resource for productive and industrial development, a structuring element of the urban form, but also an urban margin progressively marginalised by infrastructure, urbanisation processes and economic transformations. The research therefore proposes to reinterpret these river basins as an integrated system — defined as the ‘Blue Comb’ — which could become one of the main interpretative and design keys for contemporary Turin. The aim is to identify strategies and actions capable of renewing their ecological, social and economic role, enhancing their potential as environmental corridors and spaces for interaction between the city and the surrounding area.

The analysis is developed through the three interpretative perspectives mentioned above — ecological city, inherited city and leisure city — which allow the river system to be observed from different and complementary points of view. The lens of the ecological city highlights the role of rivers as natural infrastructures capable of strengthening urban environmental resilience, improving biodiversity and contributing to climate adaptation processes. The perspective of the inherited city, on the other hand, analyses the relationship between rivers, built heritage and historical processes of urban transformation, highlighting how the river landscape is the result of a stratification of urban practices, infrastructures and morphologies. Finally, the lens of the city of leisure explores the potential of rivers as spaces for public enjoyment, leisure and socialising, highlighting the role that these places can play in the construction of new forms of urban habitability.

Starting from these three perspectives, the research identifies a series of strategic areas along watercourses and proposes a sequence of actions aimed at reactivating the currently untapped potential of the river system. The overall programme of interventions focuses in particular on existing urban contexts which, despite possessing significant environmental, landscape or social characteristics, have so far played a marginal role in urban policies and public investment. The proposed meta-project suggests that each of these areas could take on a specific function consistent with its territorial character and, at the same time, generate positive effects on the entire urban system.

The research ultimately leads to the definition of nine strategic projections, understood as possible trajectories for the transformation of Turin’s river system. These projections derive from a comprehensive rethinking of the urban narrative linked to waterways and the discovery of new potential focal points along their course. The meta-project thus focuses on some of the structural characteristics of the city crossed by rivers, recognising the value of the relationship between natural and ecological resources and the built landscape, which has been established over time through historical processes and urban transformations. From this perspective, the research proposes to reaffirm the historical link between Turin and the surrounding area, reinterpreting in a contemporary light the idea — already present in the Baroque vision of the city — of an urban system in which the form of the city and the natural landscape are deeply interconnected.

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The introductory seminar “Urban regeneration and civic imagination,” organized by Semi di Rigenerazione in collaboration with Mauro Fontana and sponsored by the Order of Architects of the Province of Agrigento, will feature local and national experts as guests.

“Revitalizing underutilized urban spaces, enhancing vacant lots by renovating them or creating opportunities for socialization and participation. Creating a network between public and private institutions, associations, and ordinary citizens to reuse schools, sports facilities, squares, and urban courtyards. Imagining that forgotten places can once again become places of value creation and a possible future.”

Social media channels for the project:

https://www.facebook.com/brualinu

https://www.instagram.com/brualinu

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Whether in the case of entire parts of cities, buildings or complexes of buildings, individual units that are being emptied, or portions of open spaces and urban voids, there emerges, often earlier in urban practices than in urban planning and policies, the capacity (of public and private, profit and non-profit actors) to imagine disused/available urban heritage as an asset for the definition (and redefinition) of the strategic development horizons of urban systems.

 

The objective of this research work is to investigate the potential offered by combined urban regulations for incentives to use the private units available on the ground floors of the city of Turin as support for welfare policies. The research is carried out in collaboration with Urban Lab and the City of Turin.

 

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You can download the full report (in Italian) from this page.

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Although the tools available to administrations have proved very effective in dense and dynamic urban contexts such as Milan, however, their application in small and medium-sized urban areas remains an open question.

In these areas, the demand for regeneration is difficult to translate into a model of intervention transferable to every context. It is built starting from a process of analysing each region to recognise and interpret the specific context, intercept areas considered separate and incorporate often non-explicit social demands able to redefine the perimeters and ingredients of regeneration.

Starting with this consideration, the Future Urban Legacy Lab (FULL) for the Lombardy Region – General Directorate for Regional and Civil Protection – and ANCI Lombardy have prepared a model for regional regeneration aimed at providing operational and specific solutions for each region by systematising existing regional, social and spatial resources.

This model is proposed as a new regeneration toolbox to be used by municipalities and Centres of Competence, with the intention of guiding strategic planning and programming, implementation and management actions

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An Effective Solution

FULL’s research aims to define a model of regional regeneration that looks at the existing fabric, the morphology of settlements and the specific recurrences of each context and region analysed.

The model prepared suggests a shift to an ordinary condition in which urban and regional regeneration are the structural and not the extraordinary form of urban processes.

FULL’s contribution aims to identify the possibilities offered by the Lombardy Region’s law L.R.18/19 for urban and regional regeneration even in small and medium-sized urban areas, and at supporting local administrations in defining an effective intervention model able to take advantage of the potential expressed by the regions.

An Alternative Method

Early explorations

The analyses and field investigations conducted during the research in three specific and very different regions – the five municipalities of the Lecco area (Casatenovo, Missaglia, Besana, Monticello and Triuggio), the municipalities of the Cremasco area and Varedo -, as well as open dialogues with municipal administrations and local players, brought to light a real demand for parallel or alternative regeneration potential compared to an initial catalogue of sites shared at regional level.

From the large industrial precincts, in fact, reflection has been extended to the future of built-up areas and the widespread opportunities for regeneration offered by individual buildings; to the rethinking of the agricultural structure and the production cycle; to the organisational system of property; and to the entire environmental infrastructure as a whole.

The FULL model

These early explorations not only brought to light rich possibilities of transformation that go beyond the scale of a single building, but also contributed to identifying three basic hypotheses on which the proposed regional regeneration model is based:

– The model is not an adaptation of urban regeneration prototypes.

– The heart of the matter is not pre-identified brownfield sites, but a demand for regeneration on a regional scale.

– Regional regeneration requires local actors capable of acting as a network in the medium to long term.

These aims have been translated by FULL into an operational tool that supplements the Lombardy model of regional regeneration and can be replicated, adapting to the specific needs of other contexts through a structure broken down into seven phases:

1- Define the field of action as a project and strategic action

Positioning in a field of action is a strategic project that identifies clear and defined intervention perimeters; the effects on which to measure the impacts remain modifiable in the course of the action.

2- Measure the region

Transformation potential is characteristic of each region and can be measured through a series of synthetic indicators. It is thus possible to identify certain regional recurrences and establish criteria for selecting and evaluating projects.

3- Regenerate for and with the local network

Urban and regional regeneration starts with the recognition and discussion with public and private actors who have a proven capacity for action (agency) and involvement in the region.

4- Listening and sharing regeneration with local stakeholders

Listening to and sharing the values of regeneration in an inclusive way allows the dialogue to be further extended beyond the perimeters of the previously defined scope.

5- Framing and Problem Setting

Problem setting and construction of a local regeneration framework, in accordance with the regional bodies, may eventually also help smaller contexts to develop strategic reasoning with respect to their own perspectives in the regional context.

6- Identify tangible and intangible assets structuring the project actions

Following the interim phases and the progressive selection of the regional regeneration framework, it is necessary to identify the tangible and intangible elements susceptible to transformation on which to mobilise project actions.

7- Designing targeted transformation actions

The elaboration of specific strategies and actions for regional regeneration aims at activating cycles, including micro cycles, of mobilisation of local resources. The advisory role for Centres of Competence in providing a local interpretation of regeneration thus emerges.

This regeneration model is based on an exploration of regions’ potential through specific and synthetic quantitative analyses. Methodologically, the measurement of local potential is developed through a series of mappings and indicators organised into four categories that frame successive decisions and priority definitions: Location, Regional Capital, Social Capital, Trajectories.

The three pilot cases researched were analysed in parallel, using similar sources and producing similar maps in order to ensure comparability, thus providing a replicable framework for the Centres of Competence.

An Exportable Model

For operational regeneration in areas with different characteristics, FULL therefore proposes a model based on two main objectives:

• Recognizing the specific characteristics and potential of a territory, rather than just the perimeter of abandoned sites, leading to individual and unique outcomes in every context in which it operates.
• Be replicable in the form of an “intervention structure,” emphasizing a system-based approach rather than an area-based one.

The method of interpreting the territory proposed by FULL therefore encourages a process of reframing and identifying a problem that may differ from the initial assumptions.

However, to put these ideas into practice, it is also necessary to build capacity through the work of the Centres of Expertise – reimagined as hubs for action, help desks and training – thereby bringing new skills into local authorities. In this regard, identifying and harnessing local networks and organisations that have demonstrated a capacity for action and engagement is a key factor in identifying the resources that can fuel regeneration processes.

FULL’s research therefore contributes to defining a model of territorial regeneration that looks at the existing fabric, the morphology of settlements, and territorial recurrences to identify opportunities and potential in the territory that are not always obvious and to develop targeted regeneration strategies.

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