The aim of the Urban Plans Studio is to provide students with skills to understand and interpret the characters of the contemporary city, and to address the current urban planning priorities.

In this sense, the course activity aims to supply an adequate knowledge about the theoretical framework of the urban planning and design discipline, and to experiment with the related tools and techniques at the different scales of neighborhood, city and metropolitan area.

The Urban Plans Studio aims at providing students with skills and knowledges in territorial and urban anlysis, as well as in urban planning and design issues at different scales.

At the end of the course, as an outcome both of lectures, bibliographical readings and project work, in the final presentation students are expected to demonstrate:

- capacity to understand and interpret the complexity of contemporary city at the different scales and to identify the relationships and connections between the different territorial systems within urban, peri-urban and agricultural landscapes;

- capacity to investigate and discuss issues and key concepts of contemporary debate and practice in urban planning;

- awareness of the multiple tools and methodologies in contemporary urban planning;

- awareness of the specific relationship betwenn urban planning strategies, and urban design solutions and outcomes at the local scale;

- awareness of the ecological and enviromental issues as key components in contemporary urban planning and design.

Specifically through the practical tasks of the Studio, students are expected to demonstrate:

- capability to represent in technical drawings critical readings of urban weaknesses and potential concerning different territorial and urban systems (infastructural, environmental, morphological and functional);

- capability to represent, in effective products and formats (thematic panels, papers and classroom presentations), urban strategies and design solutions through urban planning and design tools;

- capability to communicate and explain critical readings, planning proposals and design results concerning the selected territory.

The first goal of the Studio is to strengthen the theoretical and technical skills of the students, which are necessary to tackle with the main contemporary issues of urban planning: the relations between general planning frameworks and strategies and local urban projects; the morphological and functional consistency of the urban transformations with their context; the construction of green and blue networks as a primary infrastructure of the contemporary city; the open spaces design; the urban planning rules (density, urban tissue, plot ratio); the methods and techniques for intervention in the contemporary city, that are consistent with the principles of sustainability and equity.

Urban planning and urban design are still the main tools to address the city shapes and performances, although today they require the taking of new contents in order to effectively direct the development of the urban organism and adapt it to the new needs of contemporary territory.

The new priority is to provide the conditions for a new quality of urban living in the contemporary forms of contemporary city extended at a metropolitan scale: regenerating and efficiently retrofitting the tissues of the built city, both in its historical identity and in recent urban fabrics; enhancing and preserving natural resources, first soil and ecosystem functionalities that it expresses; increasing environmental and ecological performance of open spaces, in order to create the conditions for a resilient and adaptive urban design, capable of responding to the pressures of climate change and providing some possible responses to the contemporary forms of urban living and economies.

Assuming these main goals, the course addresses the contemporary city project through updated tools of urban planning and design. Within the Plan, the spatial structures and strategic priorities are defined on the general scale; at the same time, the relationships and connections between the different territorial systems can be defined as a comprehensive view of the spatial project, where it is possible to assess the implications and impacts of the possible modifications of the territory. 

On one hand, the urban plan defines an overall scenario, setting a medium-long spatial scheme and indicating the strategic priorities and performance guidelines for territorial development; on the other hand, the plan strategies and provisions are implemented and they take shape on the urban scale. Besides, the urban design verifies the adequacy and consistency of the planning strategies and rules, with the characteristics of the urban context in its morphological, functional, environmental and social aspects. The urban project is addressed to the modification and regeneration of the urban environment beginning with its main components: the built environment, the open spaces’ connections and the social composition. The challenge of the project is to experiment with and carry out a revised forms of masterplan, as a procedural and gradual tool that defines: an overall program of interventions; a spatial structure where are fixed the coherences and relationships between the transformations of underused and abandoned urban areas and empty voids (broad legacy of consolidated de-industrialization processes and recent de-malling ones, related to places of tertiary and retail, more and more frequently located in the metropolitan area) with the timely transformations of the existing urban tissues and the open spaces’ network.

According to this context, the workshop activity within the Urban Plans Studio (UPS) will start from the interpretation and evaluation of the spatial, infrastructural, environmental and socio-economic features of different territorial contexts located in the Milan metropolitan area, that will be chosen by the students on the basis of the teachers’ proposals. The selected contexts will be analyzed, both in relation to existing planning strategies on the territorial and urban scale, and through the preparation of specific analytic and interpretative documents concerning infrastructural, functional, morphological, environmental and landscape components. This analysis will be propaedeutic to the development of an urban regeneration and transformation plan concerning the selected territorial transect.

The course is located at the beginning of the MSc path and is conceived to merge together students with different previous formative experiences and provide them a common ground of knownledges and expertises in the field of urban planning and design.

Therefore no other specific prerequisites are required.

For each workshop phases, there will be a collective evaluation of the analysis and project work with a partial grade for the group.

The final exam will concern the presentation and discussion of the all analysis and project work, with specific reference to the bibliography. The presentation will be organized as a public discussion in which every group will present its work. The final mark will combine the evaluation of the different phases of the workshop, the final evaluation of the project, and the theoretical knowledge of the students.

Students will be able to explain and to argue the content of the analysis and project work by highlighting the relationship between the spatial structure, morphological and functional features, general planning strategies (environmental, infrastructural and settlement strategies) and urban design solutions.

Approximately, the final grade will be composed as follows: 10% class involvement (including attendance/discussions), 30% theoretical knowledge; 60% presentation of the project work.