Scenario Analysis. Toward a Change in the Soil Consumption Paradigm

Abstract

The processes of urbanization affecting the modern world have seen the explosion of the city and the transformation of compact and well defined structures in agglomerations with a seamlessly expansion. This has sparked a number of social and economic consequences that have impacted on the city, on the urbanized areas, and on the surroundings. The usage of the term “sprawl” to define the process of expansion of the human agglomerations dates back to eighty years ago, about, and from that period countless researches were done on the argument, also if it is open the question about the future trends of the city; if it is clear that the expansive model is still winning, it is equally necessary to identify new models that can better interpret the needs for a new attention to the territory and its environment. For this purpose the paper explores the feasible use of the scenario analysis as tool for defining the potential evolutionary paths of the city. Particular attention is placed on the construction of de-urbanization’s scenarios, namely the set of reorganization’s hypotheses of urban structures focused on the compaction of their physical size and on the maximizing of the number of residents and users. The paper seeks to deepen the possible trajectories of de-urbanization and of urban and territorial reorganization stretched to reverse the diffusion and expansive processes at the metropolitan level. The paper initially defines the characters of the processes of urbanization, also with reference to some research’s models. The second part investigates the use of scenarios for the construction of evolutionary trends. The third, finally, examines the trends comparing the processes of urban growth and of de-urbanization.