Far vedere l’urbanistica

Is urban planning visible?

The case of Milan.

Urban planning is a young discipline that emerged at the turn of the last century in Great Britain, in the US, and in Germany. During the last hundred years it had a decisive impact on the formation of the modern big city in different countries varying under the different political and economic conditions with peaks in the interwar period and in the reconstruction and modernization period after the Second World War. In recent years a certain decline of its influence in favour of private planning is evident.

Urban planning comprised more than physical planning. It reached from technical or social infrastructure to the overall general regulation of construction activities but fulfilled also tasks concerning the general representation of political power and the change of social structures or general conditions of life. The traces of these activities are not always visible at first sight. They may be concealed or had been physically invisible from the very beginning. Uncovering traces of urban planning intentions or activities in the existing built environment will help to better understand the links of planning and architecture, its impact on the urban fabric in relation to other individual and spontaneous activities, and thus giving also an insight into the general extend of autonomy in architecture.

The envisaged seminar will consist of two parts.

- A lecture series will introduce to the trajectory of urban planning presenting famous planning projects, influential planning competitions and important planning theories and debates. Far from being exhaustive these examples will be restrained to paradigmatic cases from different countries of Europe and overseas.

-The second part will be a process oriented project seminar seminar dealing with the traces of urban planning projects in selected areas of Milan. Small groups of students will individually deal with specific areas collecting material on the physical appearance of their respective area and confronting these findings with information found in primary and secondary sources like maps, reports, planning literature and alike. A reading capacity of Italian will be of great help for this task.

The public presentation of the results of each group with the commentaries of each working team will be the basis of the final notification and is a central element of the exercise. It will not necessary consist of a written paper or illustrated report but may as well be a visualisation or display.

Hartmut FrankAgosto 2014-09-18

Introductory literature

http://books.google.it/books/about/Milan.html?id=GRwAJgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y

Sutcliffe, Anthony, The History of Urban and Regional Planning, An annotated bibliography, Alexendrine Press, Oxford 1981
Secchi, Bernardo, Prima lezione di urbanistica, Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2000Roncayolo, Marcel, Lectures de Villes. Formes et temps, èditions Parenthèse, Marseilles 2002

Morandi, Corinna, Milan: The Great Urban Transformation, Venezia: Marsilio, 2007

Further reading lists will be distributed during the seminar