The ecological value of urban regeneration. Green as a founding element of the project

Starting from interpretative and functional matters, the paper analyzes the complexity and the themes of the regeneration, focusing the attention on the possible ecological strategies that the project must face. It is necessary to frame the regenerative approach from a terminological point of view, underlining the peculiarities and differentiating it from the other terms used in past: recovery, renewal and rehabilitation; not to incur in a fast trivialization. The regeneration must face and accept the experimental and innovative character of its process, with a long term sense-making vision, seeking equity and integration through unpublished formal and functional situations. The green public spaces will have a key role how innovative elements for new forms of interaction between “urban” and “nature”. The regeneration will look for a new cohesion considering the public spaces through a multi-level and multi-disciplinary approach. The “Cities and Biodiversity Outlook” reports questions and challenges to the urban design. It points out, in the biodiversity investigation, a strategic element to develop urban resilience, building up complex natural habitats, rich and attractive, redefining the environmental governance agenda. The core of the paper is the experience of the “Re-active Strategies” project, started in 2016 at Politecnico di Milano, Mantua Campus. The reading of around eighty projects has delineated some themes that focus the characters of urban regeneration, between a plurality of actions and activities to revitalize marginal places inside the cities. Starting from the development of the social and ecological resilience strategy and promote a network of urban spaces is underlined the necessity to insert strong natural elements in the urban centers, facing the attention to the design of the contact frame between city and nature. The regenerative approach needs to know the characters of the places pay attention to verify the design coherence of the urban actions, both to the local and territorial scale. The research ultimately underline five strategy and work themes, in which it is deduced the needs to: assume the history and the historical evidence as a design materials; recognize the value and the role of the new ecosystem; deeply integrate the project in the policy agenda; adopt a multi-scale approach to generate attractiveness on the main points of the urban grid and start a progressive planning process refers to a multiple visions, defining what is called “open design”.