Eco districts - Strategies and techniques for urban regeneration in Europe

Between January and March 2014, at the invitation of the Biennial Barbara Cappochin, some of those involved in exemplary interventions of urban regeneration from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, France and Italy came to Padua. With them, representatives from the Institutions and exponents of innovative research developed in Italy, for the redevelopment of buildings and the contexts in which they are to be found. The study days dedicated to Eco Districts (Bo01, Ørestad, Eco-Viikki, Vauban, Plan d'Ou, Le Albere) and to urban and architectonic multi-disciplinary and multi-participant "remodelage", confirmed that it is possible to create parts of the city according to criteria that change from time to time (because they are born as precise and imaginative answers to real problems which might be economic, social, etc.) but related to the fundamental idea of considering the urban fabric as a trigger for development. The book, the start of a process of complex research which will continue in the future, proposes - starting from Renzo Piano's introduction - to adopt a new way of behaving when dealing with the redesign of the contemporary Italian city, and offers a critical collection of strategies and techniques which have already produced urban projects in many part of Europe, from which to learn, from which to select innovative instruments and methods. Without ignoring the difficulty of operating in the contemporary economic situation, a difficulty that often represents an obstacle, sometimes an alibi, because the Eco Districts can be - and has been in most cases, in different countries - the instrument with which to design a different society.