The former mining area of Santa Barbara in Tuscany and a spatial strategy for its regeneration

The former brown coal mining site of Santa Barbara (1,600 ha) is located in the Valdarno area of Tuscany, Italy. It is owned by Enel, the main Italian energy company, formerly State-run and progressively privatized since 1992. As mining activities drew to a close, Enel began developing an Environmental Rehabilitation Plan (“Piano di Recupero Ambientale”) for the site in 1993, as required by law. To date, that plan has not yet been implemented. In the meantime, the Santa Barbara site has been reconquered by ‘nature’. Within the framework of the Enel's Futur-e project, the Politecnico di Milano in collaboration with the Università degli Studi di Firenze have designed a spatial strategy for the redevelopment of Santa Barbara, capable to interact with the Environmental Rehabilitation Plan. This paper describes the history and particular landscape of the site and, from the inside, the complex process undertaken to design the spatial strategy and the Master Plan for the area. Based upon the cultural heritage of cycling in Tuscany, the “Santa Barbara Cycling Hub & Park” Master Plan is the first milestone on the path to a sustainable landscape and heritage-based development, in a continuously changing scenario driven by shifting energy market dynamics and Enel's business strategy.