Mobility infrastructures as public spaces. A reconnection project

Giulio Giovannoni

doi:10.6093/1970-9870/8295

Giulio Giovannoni University of Florence

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/1970-9870/8295

Keywords: mobility infrastructures, public places, urban explosion

Abstract

The essay deals with the theme of reconnecting, through urban planning and public works design, the relationship between mobility infrastructure and spaces for social life. The first part contains a historical reflection on the integration between mobility infrastructures, commercial/directional facilities and public spaces. The second section analyzes the consequences determined by the advent of the car and the urban explosion on this relationship. The third part of the essay develops a critical reflection on the way we look at the relationship mobility/public space and proposes a change of perspective. The concluding section of the essay contains some specific proposals, of a planning and normative kind, to recover the integration between mobility facilities and public/private spaces for social life in contemporary cities.

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Author Biography

Giulio Giovannoni, University of Florence

Giulio Giovannoni is an architect and urban planner, with a PhD from the University of Florence, where he is a tenured Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning. He teaches urban design studios and courses in urban theory and landscape urbanism. In 2019-20 Giovannoni was a Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture at UC Berkeley, where he taught an urban design studio investigating the Macrolotto Uno in Prato, Italy. He is a founder and co-director of the scholarly association, Cross-disciplinary Urban Spaces, an international multi-disciplinary group of researchers focusing on urban and rural spaces. He was a visiting scholar at Harvard and UC Berkeley and a research fellow in Urban Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He has lectured widely and is the author of numerous publications, including his most recent book, (2017) Tuscany beyond Tuscany: Rethinking the City from the Periphery, and the co-edited volumes Urban Space and the Body (2019) and Cross-Disciplinary Approaches to Italian Urban Space (2019).

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