Smart Cities

09/12/2012

The last post of the series on smart cities concerns some international and local solutions to clean and improve degraded areas of the cities, possibly with green solutions.

We come to the first case: Paraisópolis in Brazil, a project supported by the local authorities to give hope to a favelas without basic services such as sewers and public transport, and a constant victim of landslides and flooding.

The project once completed provides a unique multifunctional building self sustainable and where the people can find; shops, cultural and sports centers and public transport station. In addition special drainage systems, will feed the numerous small urban vegetables gardens typical of this favela with the same water that in past caused flooding

http://www.u-tt.com/projects_Grotao.html 

Let's go back to Italy and specifically to my local reality to which I care, the context is different as the solution, not a densely populated favela but a degraded industrial wasteland in Marghera and the promoter of this project is Pierre Cardin business man of fashion and design.

We are talking of the Palais Lumiere, a giant skyscraper – sculpture fully eco-friendly, which uses solar, wind and geothermal energies plus an innovative insulation technology to minimize energy consumption. The use of the building is not just about hotels and luxury apartments but also centers of research, education and wellness, spaces for exhibition and conference, an emergency room and a shopping mall.

The surrounding industrial area will be reclaimed to create a park and a small pier.

http://www.palaislumiere.eu/index.php 

I  think that we must take every opportunity to solve the problem of degraded areas of our cities in order to avoid the consume of our land,keeping in mind the teachings of one of the greatest Italian business men, Adriano Olivetto who understood many years ago the importance and linkage of development with architecture and good policies to protect the environment and the social framework

Stefano Pasqualetto

13/11/2012

Few days ago I talked about the tendency of families and businesses to moving to the countryside for various reasons, and the resulting concreting of increasingly large areas.

There are many reasons about this phenomenon, in my opinion, one of these is the expansion of degraded suburbs and the inability to absorb our industrial past.

I am referring in particular to my reality, that of Mestre, where because of a short-sighted policy and bad economic times the city center is contracting on itself while grey areas of social and environmental degradation are growing, a shared reality to ever more Italian cities.

I want to bring a couple of examples of how the politicians are not moving in the direction of a smart city:

Parco Ponci until 1949

Parco Ponci right now

Never ended (due to the crisis) luxury apartements

It used to be a park,but now is...

No wonder that many people prefer to move out of town.

This video explains very well what is part of my thinking to reverse the trend of consumption of the territory, we can manage the problem by redeveloping what already exists: our old industrial areas and poor neighborhoods. In order to offer us opportunities to improve our quality of life and the environment in which we live.

There are also great opportunities in the economy, in this moment is much easier to start a business on building restoration rather than build something completely new that hardly will be sold. Obviously restoring or improving has less political prestige than inaugurate something new, and this is problematic.

The beauty and the beast: Porto Marghera's facilities viewed from Venice

We are used to think to Porto Marghera's landscape as something horrible that reminds death and poisoned air,but a serious political agenda and the will of many one day might clean that place,creating a perfect location to move back businesses, reconnecting the city to its workplaces.

To be continued...

Stefano Pasqualetto

11/11/2012

A recent survey by ISTAT has revealed a worrying fact:, Italy is among the first places in Europe as regards the use of soil.

This reckless urbanization is compromising our territory and as regards the Veneto is clear that this issue is closely connected with the increased geological risk and increasing flooding of last years and these days.

But can we solve this problem smartly?

When we think to smart cities easily we imagine something futuristic or utopian, but not always is this case, especially in Europe and in Italy where the key to achieve the “smart city” lies in the reuse of pre-existing, or at least, its improvement.

I live in Mestre and when I go to Padova in the morning I realize there's no more distinction between town and countryside,the two cities are literally connected by an almost endless belt of houses and sheds although services are not so good.

People are fleeing from our uncomfortable city,thinking they will find better air if they move just 10 km away,than they start to relies on cars for everything,whereas business men build their sheds in the countryside,but their goods stuck in roads unsuitable for heavy volume traffic.

This is why I'm going to explore with a series of short updates different solutions to reverse the soil consuming trend in particular what regards my local reality.

Stefano Pasqualetto

http://www.istat.it/it/archivio/51331

05/11/2012

Since there are cities men always did their best to improve the multitude of aspects that city life could offer.

Thinking to this subject I realized smart cities are not something that only affects our present or future,but in certain ways we can find them in our past.

Once the smart cities were those more defensible or those offering great universities and places of worship and these are just few and simple examples of what used to be the smart city of past.

Creativity,genius and pragmatism are just few words of list of skills that can be connected to the race of human beings to improve living standards,we can think to Leonardo da Vinci who made several blueprints of an ideal city where the streets and the various level of the city are meant to be cleaned by rainwater, a useful expedient to safeguard the health of the population.

Now among the many functions entrusted to the cities there is a new fundamental one: help us building a more sustainable world, because our urban lifestyle has now become too detrimental to the environment and resources of the planet and is inevitably compromising the climate.

Here follows a brief description of smart cities and in order to introduce the topic that I'm going to deal with in next weeks.

The smart city can be defined as the integration of technology into a strategic approach to sustainability, citizen well-being, and economic development.

I suggest also to watch the following TED talk

Stefano Pasqualetto