Quality, Environmental Comfort and Safety in Public Spaces

ABSTRACT

Climate change and health emergencies require integrated responses to mitigate the effects of the phenomena on urban realities and citizens and increase their resilience. In line with the principles enshrined in the international summits, the paper illustrates an experimental approach aimed at integrating urban quality, micro-climatic comfort, saving and enhancing the water resource and the reintroduction of nature in the city. The experimentation focuses on the regeneration of public space and at a neighbourhood scale in the dimension of "everyday" living. As enshrined in the New Urban Agenda of 2016, public space plays a central role in helping to increase sustainability, social integration and develop conviviality in urban contexts. The experimentation aims to build a multidisciplinary framework that includes the impacts of climate change and those brought by the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. The objective is to enrich the concept of urban quality by integrating it with ecological and environmental quality with particular reference to the mitigation of the effects of climate change on urbanized areas. Today, in regenerating the city and designing in the direction of an ecological transition, it is necessary to assume an integrated methodology. The multidisciplinary is in fact the key issue of the proposed experimentation to be able to multiply the quality of urban design. The aim is to meet the needs related to the well-being of the citizen through the integrated analysis of different disciplines related to urban microclimate, the role of rainwater, the presence of plants and green spaces, land consumption, drainage systems, the connection between the parts of the city and the perception of citizens. The experimentation illustrated proposes an integrated approach to the regeneration of neighbourhoods in the city of Rome by prospecting "neighbourhood green networks" punctuated by interventions of different sizes, applying the principles of urban acupuncture.