Searching for Ariadne’s thread. Some remarks on urban resilience and orientation

Giovanni Rabino; Valerio Cutini

doi:10.6092/1970-9870/889

Giovanni Rabino Politecnico di Milano
Valerio Cutini University of Pisa

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6092/1970-9870/889

Abstract

This paper concerns the methods of analysis of the configuration of the urban grids. More in details, it will focus on the configurational approach to the analysis of urban settlements, briefly presenting the different methods and techniques it has inspired, sketching their features, highlighting their actual utility and reminding their respective advantages and limits. Moreover, it will propose the use of some further configurational parameters, suitable for describing and reproducing interesting features of urban settlements; more in details, it will cast attention onto the richness and the variety of paths within a settlement, what makes it resilient, that is capable of sustaining changes and transformations without radically modifying its inner geography. Such parameters have been tested on the case studies of Pisa and Venice, which can easily be recognised as particularly relevant and significant, in that the results they provide are diametrically different. Those outputs will then be presented and discussed; the findings are suitable for suggesting resilience as a singular clue for urban orientation, so that the configurational techniques can be proposed as a tool for evaluating and predicting this spatial attitude, here finding an Ariadne’s thread for urban wayfinding.

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Author Biographies

Giovanni Rabino, Politecnico di Milano

He is professor of Urban Planning at the School of Architecture and Building Engineering of Polytechnic of Milan. He is anacknowledged expert in urban studies, especially applying system theories and methods. His main contributions concernoperational urban models, evolutionary theory applied to geographical structures and, recently, web technologiessupporting multi-agents planning.

Valerio Cutini, University of Pisa

As a researcher in Town Planning in the University of Pisa, since 1996 Valerio Cutini teaches Urban Planning at theFaculty of Engineering of the University of Pisa. His main interests and studies are in the area of the analysis of urbansettlement, aimed at focusing on their development and the diachronic transformation of their morphology and theirfunctional consistency.

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