Edoardo Salzano, The Piazza and The City - , [email protected] 40° International Making Cities Livable Conference Edoardo Salzano The Piazza

Edoardo Salzano, The Piazza and The City - http://eddyburg.it, [email protected]

40° International Making Cities Livable ConferenceEdoardo Salzano

The Piazza and the City

The city is the square. A city without squares (without a square) is not a city.

I speak about one kind of cities, not about any present city. I speak about the good European city: the city as the history of our civilisation build it, and as we want preserve it and restore it and build it today: for the people of today and for the people of tomorrow.

The European City: that “uniquely european invention, intimately connected to the development of democratic and representorial self-government” (Suzanne Crawford Lennard)


Marcel Aymard, The Piazza in Mediterranean City

• The public space of the city, where the man is held to appear, has a double identity. On one hand it is different from the home – from the site of the rest and the sleep, from the closed space, the private space, the feminine space, the space defended and to be defended. On the other hand, it is different from the flat country, from the empty country of the land, a open space but the space of the work and of the nature.

• The public space of the city imposes himself as the space of the action without working: the site of the ceremonies and the festivals, of the gestures and of the games, of the leisure and of the jokes.

• […] the city is organized for the exchanges between men: exchanges of signs and symbols also more than of goods.

• The very centre of social life is not in the roads, it is in the piazza, where all the confused and chaotic circulation of the narrow streets flows. More and more defended from the trespassing of the privates, the piazza is the public space par excellence, a constant rule for town designing. It is the site of encounters and gossips, of the citizens assembly and of the mass manifestations, of the solemn decisions as of the capital punishments


Four main task of the piazza

• The piazza is the catalyst for community engagement.

• The piazza is a school for learning social behaviour

• The piazza is the symbol, and the site of the representation, of the city identity.

• The piazza is the market where the goods (the material, so as the im-material ones) are exchanged


A liveable City is the home of the community

<<< Todi,Umbria, Italy

>>>Culemburg, Nederland


Aquisgranum, the main building and the chorus

A liveable City is the home of the community


the complexity of its functions and the richness of the interpersonal exchanges

the complexity of its functions and the richness of the interpersonal exchanges

Tubingen, Deutschland

Freiburg am Breisgau, Deutschland

Capri, Italy


the centres of social life and the foci of the whole community

Naples, Italy, The Market

Rome, Italy, Public Assembly

Sciacca, Italy, Carnival


A good relationship with its site and with the environment

Carlofonte, Sicily, Italyfoto by G. Berengo Gardin


Some Piazza around Italy

Faenza

Greve in Chianti

Vigevano


Siena, Italy - Piazza del Campo

Piazza del Campo, Siena


Some Piazza, around Italy

Ferrara, from www.carefree.com


What is the wealth of the open public spaces?

Two sides of the question:

• how does it go for the squares were they were leaving and liveable parts of the city – first of all in the historic centres?

• how are the public spaces in the new parts of the cities – in the new settlements and in the new peripheries?


Four main causes of the risk

1. the disfiguring by arrogant and incongruous architectures

2. the invasion of car traffic and car parking

3. the flooding by mass tourism

4. the disappearing of normal functions


The disfiguring by arrogant and incongruous architectures

Ulm, Rathaus


The disfiguring by arrogant and incongruous architectures

Wien, San Stephan Platz


Some goals for leavable squares

They must be partially closed, protected, but they must be in the same time opened on a perspective, a panorama, a flow

The buildings that surround it must compose a chorus of background buildings, but in the same time

we must have some soloist.

The shape of the space must be regular, but also varied. Curve lines and straight ones can very well combine together

The furniture must encourage different uses from different kind of persons

The open public spaces must be alive and animated, in many parts of each day and in all the days of the week

Also very little utilities can help to make alive a public space: a mail-box and a bancomat and some telephones can be useful, if the neighborhood is not so big to justify a bank or a post-office

The open public spaces must be at the very Center of neighborhood. Many journeys must cross in it or near it. The public spaces don’t live only as a scenario, but typically as focus of a community

The open public spaces must also be the Hinge between the neighborhood and the city - between indoors and outdoors. A hinge in two senses: the door from which you enter and the door from which you go out and you enter the city

The open public spaces must be the sites where happened the events that can interest the community

In the public open spaces you have the presence of Nature. You can have the view of the sea or some trees were you had once water of canals, or simple birds

Documents

Edoardo Salzano, The Piazza and The City - , [email protected] 40° International Making Cities Livable Conference Edoardo Salzano The Piazza