Technology and Urban Structure

In the last decades, the concept of cultural landscape, in its physical and social dimension, has been stoked by the contribution of a new interpretation of “technology,” understood as an innovative approach in the definition of new relationships between information, sustainability, and public space. It is a perspective that follows the changing cultural references of urban society, wondering which is the relationship between embodiment and location, between technological innovation and urban structure and how the digital and information revolution could influence and define the characteristics of urban aesthetics in the contemporary city. This chapter offers a key for reading these topics, starting from the analysis of the grid city's ontological space, its image between morphology and technology, between streets/buildings and infrastructure/landscapes, and finally, defining new ethical and dialogical interpretative approaches on sustainability and urban development, trying to find out the potentialities of the grid cities as complex public space systems.

Cities With Grid Layout

Might it be meaningful to think that an urban model such as the orthogonal grid layout, which has been a feature of cities for millennia, could still constitute a valid and practicable model today in the planning of contemporary cities? The authors believe that this reflection on the grid model might respond positively to earlier propositions, and these notes aim to supply a synthetic contribution to the book in that direction. In detail, in the first part of the chapter, an attempt is made to overcome a critical judgement as widespread as it is superficial that is traditionally applied to grid plan cities. The reflection is as follows: relationships between the physical form of the urban grid model and its evolutionary processes, its capacity of adhering to places and flexibility, its experimentations for a theory of special equality. In the second part of the chapter, setting out from the performance features of the model, the real conditions of the topicality of the grid plan are observed in contemporary experimentations of city planning.

Urban Fronts in Murattiano Neighbourhood of Bari

Developing a project for the city for a specific urban context means building, first of all, a reliable system of knowledge, easy to read and understand, and being able to inspire other actions aimed at protecting, transforming, and promoting. It is on this complex data system that the chapter questions its nature and consistency and, specifically, the display that this system offers. The definition of the image of the city in its current configuration distinguishes the work of investigation on neighborhood or Borgo Murattiano of the city of Bari and is presented as a search for identity of the places, visible in the drawing of the facades of the blocks in their linear sequence.

Cities and Extension Plans in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

In Italy in the nineteenth century the bourgeoisie decreed the end of the old model of urban development which had been limited by the rules of military architecture. In the years of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the Bourbons established the Consigli Edilizi. Between 1859 and 1860 Francis II established 19 Consigli Edilizi; 13 were in municipalities of an administrative district. With the decree of foundation of the suburb of Bari, Gioacchino Murat donated the state land to the city and ordered that private persons and holy places were obliged to register for assessment or to sell to the municipality any land lying within the perimeter of the suburb unless they wanted to build on it. The new regime of public ownership of the land ratified by the Murattiano decree was confirmed by the “Statutes for the regular formation of the suburb of Bari” approved on 1st December 1814. The last step for assignment of land takes place before a notary. This is the signing of the assessment contract which involves the mayor, the building commission called Deputazione del borgo and the applicant. This chapters details these steps.

The Time of the Finished World Has Begun

This chapter is the first study systematically analysing the field of evaluation of territorial-political division as resulting from the practice of migration. In particular, the project is aimed to study all those places at the limits, the walls that divides territories and people, observing as the place where a new identity expressed by temporary settlements arose in a milieu characterized by a deep relation between social, politics, typical cultural, and revolutionary practices. Therefore, drawing the line is an act of duty, necessary to confront and as a social need to guarantee a certain recognition to the people and territorial identity. On the other hand, crossing the border does not imply elimination of it but rather its momentary transformation in open space, used, organized.

Calabria 1783

This chapter considers the reconstruction operations that were carried out in Calabria following the earthquake of the late-eighteenth century. The author connects the physical and ideological role played by the orthogonal grid within the scope of this urban process to Foucault's concept of the device. Such a working hypothesis makes it possible to highlight the dual-domain in which lies political power, on one hand, and technical knowledge, on the other. This is a duplicity that is not resolved in the supremacy of either one domain or the other but, rather, in their huddle in a dialectical node: the political power that avails itself of the technical knowledge to reinforce itself and the technical knowledge that takes advantage of the political power to legitimise itself.

The Orthogonal Urban Matrix of the Towns in Vojvodina, Northern Serbia

The subject of the chapter is the transformation of the urban matrix in the Northern Serbian province of Vojvodina. Being placed at the crossroads of important trans-European corridors, this territory in Southern Pannonia has always been exposed to various influences and shifts of power, which have left a significant mark on their urban matrix. The most prominent period was certainly Habsburgs' rule in Southern Pannonia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which radically reshaped inherited organic medieval-oriental matrix into planned, orthogonal regulation. This, Habsburg legacy has influenced the urban development of these towns until today. The aim of this chapter is to present the outcome of Habsburg urban regulation and accompanied orthogonal imprint in four towns, selected as case studies. The previous periods, as well as the recent challenges, are also considered. In the conclusion, the uniqueness and identity of these towns is discussed, regarding the morphing and transformations of their urban patterns during the selected periods.

The Grid Cities

The pattern of the grid city now seems dated and far from the metropolisation phenomena that characterize contemporary cities. In fact, as already happened in the past, the grid cities manage to evolve favoring the needs of its contemporary inhabitants. In this chapter, the authors try to understand some phenomena that characterize the transformation of the urban form of the grid city, highlighting its own ability to evolve between tradition and innovation. During these 200 years, the grid city, its buildings, and its public spaces were created, lived, and processed in multiple ways: built, replaced, drawn, renovated, restored. Here, the authors do not want to describe these planning and building tools, but they want to discuss the possible implications of the different transformation modes used in the grid city can have on urban and architectural perception of the physical space, the quality of life, and viability of these central places for the city's identity. The city of Bari, on the Adriatic Coast, in the South of Italy, is used as a case of study to represent concepts developed in the chapter.

Pride and Prejudice

The first building of the Murattiano district fell in 1954. Since then, a constant devastation, that between 1963 and 1964 alone counts more than 200 building replacements. Maybe the deterioration of the Murattiano district had already been decided in its birth certificate. Still, has the example contained in their best works truly disappeared or can we recognize nowadays its effect in some pieces of architecture that have most recently been built in Bari? Before expressing a judgment about quality, it is necessary to identify a list of all those cases that during the second half of last century and the first years of the new one and therefore in very recent times witness the innovations that were introduced in the local architectural culture. Innovations that concern the culture of the project and the styles of expression. Finally—through the search for the “ordinary” quality to build—the discovery of an unsuspected continuity between the compositional rule of the Murattiano neoclassicism and the experiences of the “Modern Murattiano.”

Latin American Cities

During the nineteenth century, capital cities in Latin America established a new generation of “green” grids, inherited from the tradition of Hispanic colonization that introduced new elements of modernity: technique, transport, and ecology. From hundreds of cases, it is worth paying attention to those that are most outstanding for embodying a number of characteristics: certain isolated condition, perfect geometrical layout, tram connection, “hygienist” inspiration, innovative engineering, new urban imaginary, etc. The brief presentation of some cases in Buenos Aires, México DF, Montevideo, and Sao Paolo leads the authors to assess the outstanding case of El Vedado in La Habana (1859) within its contemporary panorama. This is a canonical grid district settled in a vast and privileged area near the Caribbean Sea, with its quiet tree-lined streets and notable for its exquisite buildings. After 150 years, reviewing the transformation of this unique grid allows one to gain insight regarding the flexibility of urban grids, appreciate the splendour of its past, and explore the potential for its future.