Florence and the river: new urban perspectives (original) (raw)
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Journal of Maps, 2020
The integration of field surveys, bibliographic research and multitemporal analysis of historical maps, aerial photographs and satellite images in a GIS environment, allowed the current and past geomorphological features of the old city of Alessandria and its surrounding areas, NW Italy, to be identified and mapped. Their analysis provided an overview of the geomorphological evolution of the city that is strictly related to the historical vicissitudes occurred since the Middle Ages. Nowadays, the most representative landforms and deposits characterizing the urban landscape result from human interventions and are associated with ancient military facilities and infrastructures, a historical man-made channel network no longer recognizable, the Tanaro riverbed channelization, and the urban sprawl occurred from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards. This study represents a useful tool for urban planning and management and for raising the citizens' awareness of the urbanlandscape geomorphological features and evolution, and therefore the geo-hydrological risk.
The urban pressure on Italian river areas
2018
Rivers have been the hub of economic and social development in the human evolution, because they are essential resources for: agricultural development, infrastructure networks and development of the first urban strategies. Territory has had a radical transformation that led to a national average urbanization of about 10%; but this development has happened with different degrees of awareness and without uniform models and criteria. One of the main causes of this is due to an extreme fragmentation of planning, because the municipalities’ plans are a binding power modality, in force in Italy, but they don’t have significant and strategic references at regional and territorial scale. In particular, the Italian river areas have undergone a real siege by urban growth, outlining a critical scenario in terms of risks for the population and for the natural system. Some disciplines such as landscape ecology have contributed substantially to the integration of some environmental issues that ha...
Proceedings of the Conference CPUD '18 / III. INTERNATIONAL CITY PLANNING AND URBAN DESIGN CONFERENCE, Istanbul, 2018
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Graphical Heritage. Volume 3 – Mapping, Cartography and Innovation in Education, 2020
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Since the early 90s of last century, the city is returned to the focus of European and national policies and new theories of urban development inspired by the theme of regeneration and the new centrality of the historical part of the city. In recent years interesting process of reconstruction and rehabilitation of historic areas have been, but also experimental steps towards new means of intervention of the city and new content that contributed to the review of practice of interventions in the territory based on two key themes of the functional organization and the satisfaction of an increasing housing needs. Many Italian cities have launched plans and proposals for urban regeneration of the old town, enriched by new instances related to the values and concrete social practices of participation and environmental sustainability. A raised dynamism linked to the redistribution of functions between the city centre, specialized in business skills, and an ever-expanding suburbs, which ten...
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This work concerns Vicenza, a city located not far from Venice in the north-east corner of Italy, and it specifically refers to an area situated on the outskirts of the city’s urban fabric between the perimeter of its ancient walls and the banks of the Bacchiglione river, in the shadow of the abandoned monastery of St. Biagio. The idea of restoring that physically and socially degraded area of the city of Vicenza has long been the object of discussion on the part of local authorities. Once intimately linked to the city’s historic center, the area gradually lost its functional and social identity becoming first a parking lot and then equipped as a city warehouse. The intent to regenerate the area and the observation that the relationship between the city and its river is constantly refused, or delayed, lead to recognize in the long edge of the area a unique meeting opportunity which allows to repair the water-city association, recuperating rituals and connections from the past. The municipality is presently planning on pursuing a qualitative restoration of the area which will be used for social and cultural enrichment. The final part of the current work outlines some proposals that were developed during the Architectural and Urban Composition 2 course recently offered by the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering of the University of Padua (Italy).
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Sustainable Development and Planning X, 2018
The considerable anthropic pressure that has affected most of Italian territory in the last 60 years has altered natural conditions of coasts and river, thus increasing exposure to environmental risks. For example, increase in soil waterproofing caused a reduction in hydrological losses with a rise in flood flows (with the same rainfall conditions), especially in urban areas. This issue is important in territories like Mediterranean region, that are prone to flooding events. From this point of view, recent advances in remote sensing and geographical information system (GIS) techniques allow us to analyze morphological changes occurred in river and in urban centers, in order to evaluate possible increases in environmental risks related to the anthropization process. This paper analyzes and describes the effects of anthropization process on some rivers in the southern area of the Reggio Calabria city (the Sant'Agata, Armo and Valanidi rivers). This is a heavily anthropized area due to the presence of the airport, highway and houses. The analysis was carried out using QGIS, through the comparison of cartography data of the last 60 years, which consists of aerophotogrammetry of 1955, provided by Italian Military Geographic Institute, and the latest satellite imagery provided by Google Earth Pro.
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