Between Community Spaces: Squares of Minor Centers of Calabria

Mauro Francini; Rosario Chimirri; Annunziata Palermo; Maria Francesca Viapiana

doi:10.6092/1970-9870/5087

Mauro Francini University of Calabria, Department of Civil Engineering, Laboratory of Environment and Land Use Planning
Rosario Chimirri University of Calabria, Department of Civil Engineering, Laboratory of Environment and Land Use Planning
Annunziata Palermo University of Calabria, Department of Civil Engineering, Laboratory of Environment and Land Use Planning
Maria Francesca Viapiana University of Calabria, Department of Civil Engineering, Laboratory of Environment and Land Use Planning

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6092/1970-9870/5087

Keywords: Community spaces, interdisciplinary approach, culture of living, vernacular architecture, urban regeneration

Abstract

The theme of open “community spaces” in recent years has to the development of important interdisciplinary issues.

Nevertheless, the reading of smaller towns, in urbanistic, historical-anthropological and geographical terms appears less extended, considering the declination of public spaces as "squares." Starting from this declension we would like to introduce the first results of a research. The research had the aim of (re)interpreting the particular characteristics of these areas in specific areas such as small towns, using the region of Calabria for the case of analytic application.

These communities have diverse and stratified living cultures, altered by settlement processes that have triggered two different types of urban contexts. The former often lead either to urban areas in depopulated decay or, in contrast, in places of memories: empty containers of relationships, sterile and crystallized museum objects, reduced to scenarios on which passing groups of visitors move necessarily from those realities. The latter often encircle primitive nuclei, asphyxiating them, or characterizing the so-called "dual" or "satellites" towns, completely detached from the original urban center in which all public functions are decentralized.

The applied methodology is based on the reading of the historical-functional evolution of squares by the identification of codified compositional criteria.

Through this research we seek to verify how urban planning, in synergy with other disciplines, can define processes of regeneration aimed at restoring the meaning of "center", and thus of an urban-community reference center.

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Author Biographies

Mauro Francini, University of Calabria, Department of Civil Engineering, Laboratory of Environment and Land Use Planning

Associate professor of Town planning techniques at the University of Calabria. He researches within the problems of land and its management and techniques and tools for town and country planning.

Rosario Chimirri, University of Calabria, Department of Civil Engineering, Laboratory of Environment and Land Use Planning

Architect, PhD, and qualified as Associate Professor in Demo-ethno-anthropology in the ASN of 2012. He works at the University of Calabria within the area of the culture of vernacular and contemporary inhabitation, the reuse of historical settlements and folklore museography/museology.

Annunziata Palermo, University of Calabria, Department of Civil Engineering, Laboratory of Environment and Land Use Planning

Researcher of Town planning techniques at the University of Calabria. She deals with strategic land planning of local integrated systems of medium and low density urban and rural centers, with special regard to approaches and techniques of participation, assessment and management.

Maria Francesca Viapiana, University of Calabria, Department of Civil Engineering, Laboratory of Environment and Land Use Planning

Researcher of Town planning techniques at the University of Calabria. Her research activities refer to the types of town and country planning and programming, and they are focused on the role of mobility systems in processes of urban regeneration.

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