City of Ferrara
– Urban Renewal Project Providing for the
Redevelopment of the Western Section of the City, between the Railway
and the Boicelli Canal and between via Modena and the Po River
by Giuseppe Rando and Beppino Bonazzi
Key words: ethics, business practices.
Abstract
This urban reclamation project regards a disused
industrial area situated in the Padana Plain, in the Italian region of
Emilia Romagna. The area covers 201,370 m2 and it is
located north-west of the city of Ferrara, adjoining the city wall.
The equipment and machinery of a disused sugar
refinery as well as very old buildings once used for housing and
offices are currently being demolished.
The objectives of the General Town Planning Scheme
of the Municipality of Ferrara are based on the fact that the area
referred to above forms part of a much larger industrial area of
Ferrara, which was designed in the 1930s in the form of strategic
primary infrastructures combining residential and services
requirements. It nowadays connects the historical city of Ferrara
towards the north with the hamlet of Pontelagoscuro, at the boundary
of the province along the River Po.
The urban "gamble" is to reclaim the
"Eridania" factory for other purposes, which could represent
a "scientific area" closely linked with the faculty of
engineering of the nearby university.
The project, or the "scientific area",
would finally be used for research laboratories, accommodation
facilities, exhibition areas, offices, residential areas and open air
recreation facilities.
Geom. Giuseppe Rando and Geom. Beppino Bonazzi
Consiglio Nazionale Geometri
Via Barberini, 68
I-00187 Rome
ITALY
E-mail m.boi@cng.it
City of
Ferrara
– Urban Renewal Project Providing for the
Redevelopment of the Western Section of the City, between the Railway
and the Boicelli Canal and between via Modena and the Po River
In Italy, over years of discussions on the concepts
of town planning, the irreversible conviction seems to have achieved
whereby the authoritative model, in which the decisions were made
solely by the persons vested with town planning and development
authority, should be abandoned in favour of a more consensual model,
in which the decisions are submitted to those directly concerned,
within the framework of a process of concertation.
This principle, which has already been acknowledged
by the regions that have issued new town planning and development
laws, and which is also contained in the "land management reform
bill" presented in Parliament, and which should replace the
current legislation based on the first urban planning law, Law No.
1150 of 1942.
Equally strong is the conviction that, to redevelop
an already existing city is rather different from building a city
anew, so it will be necessary to provide the suitable instruments for
redeveloping declining urban areas, brownfields or areas suffering
from a shortage of infrastructures.
The project must necessarily focus on the clear
definition of the role of each party. In the case of urban renewal,
the discussion involves a multiplicity of (public and private)
parties, each of which represents specific social and economic, as
well as cultural and image, needs and resources.
Experience is necessarily inspired by the
principles of consensuality within the town planning and development
process.
In many cases, the local authorities intervene in
the formation of a consensus through a process of negotiation, which
comes before the planning process which leads to the development of
the city according to the proposed projects.
In order for development processes to be successful
there must be a synergic partnership between the public party (the
local authorities), whose main task is to supervise, and the private
party, which proposes and provides the resources.
The project I am about to present is an example of
partnership between the public and the private sectors in the field of
town planning for the urban renewal of a vast area near the historic
centre of Ferrara.
Ferrara, the power seat of the Este family, one of
the most important Renaissance families in Italy, is located on the
right hand bank of the Po river, close to be border between Emilia and
Veneto. It is a city of about 130,000 inhabitants and is built on flat
land. This has favoured the development of agriculture, which has
always been one of the strong points of the local economy, the
predominant crops being hemp, sugar-beet, wheat and fruit, which are
then processed at the many processing and manufacturing industries
(sugar factories, distilleries, etc.).
The core of the city, originally enclosed within
pentagonal walls some sections of which are still visible, expanded
through the centuries by means of a series of "additions"
which, according to the definition of the Ferrara-born architect Carlo
Bassi, in his volume "Why Ferrara is Beautiful" are "....
new portions of the city organized autonomously, with an important
main street and the particularity of connecting themselves effectively
to the existing fabric of the town, in such a manner as to determine a
sort of hierarchy within the parts that are directly or indirectly
concerned by the new extension".
In the Renaissance, Ferrara was one of the
wealthiest and most advanced cities in Europe.
In this period it became necessary to add two new
areas to the Medieval city, planned according to the rules of the new
architecture:
- the addition built by Duke Borso in 1451;
- the addition planned by Duke Ercole I in 1492 and gradually
built by his successors.
The latter (the so-called "Herculean
Addition") expanded the city to twice its former size and, under
the supervision of Biagio Rossetti, the court architect, gave Ferrara
an absolutely modern appearance.
The last significant "addition" was a
redevelopment planned at the beginning of the last century by an
engineer, Contini, on the land obtained from the demolition of a Papal
fortress in the south-western section of the city.
The area concerned by the project in question is
adjacent to this last addition, outside the Medieval walls.
This project, in certain parts, presents many
similarities with the more authoritative "additions" of the
past.
Due to the presence of two navigable canals (Burana
and Boicelli), this part of the city was chosen, in 1901, for the
building of the Bonora sugar factory, from the name of the leading
shareholder of a company established by landowners.
During World War II the factory was almost
completely destroyed, but immediately rebuilt at the end of the war
with state of the art machinery.
The plant (currently owned by Eridania S.p.A.) and
its grounds occupies approx. 200,000 sq. m. and skirts the railway
line, representing a large and important piece of the city, as well as
a noteworthy example of industrial archaeology.
In this area the effects of the urban sprawl of the
last few decades are more evident than in others.
The city, in fact, in its modern expansion, has
surrounded the industrial plant making it necessary to redevelop the
area and to build new infrastructures, also in consideration of the
obsolescent nature of the existing ones.
The redevelopment of areas of this kind cannot be
achieved solely through town planning decisions, but requires a
partnership between the public and private sectors.
The issue of redeveloping this part of the city was
first addressed at the beginning of the 1990s, in the wake of the
relocation elsewhere of industrial production.
In that period, on account of Eridania S.p.A., the
Ferrara surveyor, Beppino Bonazzi, contacted the local authorities to
see whether they were interested in discussing an urban renewal
project for the redevelopment of the area.
The piano regolatore generale (master
development and town planning scheme) of the time classified the area
as D/1, for manufacturing purposes. To proceed with any redevelopment
project it would have been necessary to approve a new scheme providing
for different use of land in the area, namely for residential purposes
and the service industry, consistently with the neighbouring areas.
Long negotiations followed between the company,
through the above mentioned colleague, and the local authorities, the
outcome of which was an agreement on the new land use and the drafting
of a special planning scheme (piano particolareggiato), in
enforcement of the amendments to the master development and town
planning scheme approved in the meantime, according to which the area
was now classified as a former industrial area subject to urban
renewal, and providing for the construction of new:
-
offices 24,000 cubic metres
-
shops 49,000 cubic metres
-
housing 167,000 cubic metres
Due to the variety of environments in the area
(buildings, industrial plants, canals, infrastructures), it was
necessary to proceed with the accurate vertical and horizontal
surveying of the area, to assess the lay of the land and to then draft
plans consistently with the actual situation and according to the
special planning scheme.
From the point of view of the infrastructures, the
goals provided for in the project, and financed under the Piano di
Riqualificazione Urbana (PRU), or Urban Renewal Plan, made
available by the Regional authorities of Emilia Romagna, concerned the
rearrangement of the road network within the area and its connection
with the neighbouring areas, both the south-western outskirts of the
city and the core of the city beyond the railway line and the walls.
The new multi-purpose redevelopment enjoys an
excellent location and is easily accessible from both the city centre
and the outskirts of the city, so the project provides for the
construction, in the immediate proximity, of an intermodal terminal
including the regional bus station, a parking area and the
construction of a pedestrian subway and a cycle-path connecting it
with the main railway station and the public transport system.
Environmentally, a new relationship with the
surrounding context will be developed as the project progresses.
With regard to landscape planning, trees with a
high scenic impact will be planted in a number of equipped green
areas, for recreational purposes, with a series of pedestrian pathways
along which the city may be observed from a different perspective.
The neighbouring areas, characterized by a large
number of industrial plants, will also be concerned by environmental
impact mitigation projects and actions aimed at partially concealing
the worst sights.
The buildings too have all been surveyed, to assess
the feasibility of their preservation, based on their characteristics.
To date, the refurbishment of the main production
building has been achieved, a wonderful example of industrial
archaeology, a veritable "cathedral of industry", which will
be used as the general headquarters of the company that owns it, with
340 clerical staff.
Apart from the offices, it will also contain
auxiliary facilities, such as meeting rooms, library, archive,
cafeteria, kitchen and test laboratories.
The considerable size of the project, and the
complexity of the problems concerned, require the involvement in the
project of architects, engineers, geologists and administrative law
experts.
As a whole, the implementation of the professional
part of the project may be phased as follows:
- a preliminary phase, consisting of negotiations with the public
administration and the surveying of the area and of the relevant
buildings;
- a design phase, followed by the approval of the resulting plan;
- a construction phase, for the implementation of the project.
The first phase was carried out essentially by the
above mentioned colleague; phase two has involved a team of
professional consultants coordinated by the architects Stefano Marini
and Enrico Puggioli; phase three has involved another team of
professionals coordinated by Prof. Loris Macci of Florence, with
regard to the refurbishment of the Eridania plant, and a team
coordinated by Stefano Marino, Enrico Puggioli and Bettino Bonazzi,
for the town planning works and the construction of the other proposed
buildings.
The outcome of this operation is a rational and
positive urban renewal project for the city and an example of
partnership which will undoubtedly boost other requalification
projects in the other declining parts of the city’s outskirts
affected, like the one in question, by de-industrialization.
Geom. Giuseppe Rando and Geom. Beppino Bonazzi
Consiglio Nazionale Geometri
E-mail m.boi@cng.it
28 April 2000
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