The workshop focuses on the link between infrastructures, urban spaces, mobility practices and economy. It refers to two complementary approaches: the transport economics approach; the transport and urban design approach. The workshop aims at providing the students with the analytical and design tools to explore such relationship and practically produce a transport scheme.

The general goal is to test an integrated approach on the infrastructure projects conceived as a means of place-making and not only as space of flows and a technical solution to fullfil a transport demand.

The workshop’s activities are organized in lectures and project activity.

The lectures deal with the following topics: infrastructure projects as public spaces projects; the decision making process in infrastructure policies; mobility as social capital in territorial practices; rail transport and local public transport; transport demand and transport modelling; dimensioning, integration and timetabling of services; economics and financing.

The project activity is focused on the role of a recently built light rail service and its stations in a valleyin province of Bergamo. The light rail service Bergamo-Albino that uses the grounds of a disused railway line, has changed the transport supply for the connections between the medium and small urban centers in val Seriana and Bergamo, affecting the modal split.

According to this case-study, the main issues to be addressed in the project activity are summarized in:

• How to design and dimension the light rail service and the ancillary bus and pedestrian accessibility to improve the role of the new light rail supply;
• How to design and dimension the northern extension of the line, including the feeder services;
• how to value an investment in rail infrastructure in low-density areas where car use is important in mobility practices;
• Which are the opportunities originated from changes in the accessibility of the station areas interested by the new transport supply;
• how to improve the urban dimension of the stations to the surroundings, to the residual areas, as an essential condition to improve the integration between new transport supply and location, settling and functional reassessment plans, compared to experiences already tested abroad;
• which density-driver can be used on selected stations, in order to increase accessibility supply and to suggest functional plans, sustainable both for environment and for economics, in settling and infrastructural landscape of some urban districts;
• which tools could be proposed for a correct redistribution of the positive externalities originated by strengthening and developing the infrastructure system, land value capturing and catching up all the positive externalities created by public investments

To address the issues, the main steps of the project will be:

• Identify the role of the stops, analysing the transport (supply) and the place (demand and morpho-functional context) dimensionsof the stations and its catchment area, and of the line as a whole;
• Reconstruct the settlement dynamics at the large scale that affect the mobility demand;
• Study the land use planning and urban transformation projects that modify the settlement density;
• Propose a classification of the stations for land use planning, and for the guidance and management of investments and the quality of stations;
• study the supply and demand interaction, by quantifying present and expected demand due to new policies to be designed by students; sizing the infrastructure and the transport services.

The outcome of the students’ work will be on three topics, mutually integrated:

• The station: regenerating spaces, paths, services of a station district, improving its accessibility and the quality of its services;
• Land use: proposing a new spatial development scenario, alternative to automobile-based land uses, densifying in some stations, according to specific profiles;
• Public transport: improving the public transport supply (buses and tram extension), interconnected with the stations, to expand their catchment area and to modify the modal split.

The lectures and further course materials are available on the website: www.netdiap.polimi.it/Didattica/pucci-db

For the final evaluation, we will take into account:

• assessments of reading proposed during the      lectures;
• the outcomes of the workshop;
• an examination of theoretical concepts.