The circle line “AbbracciaTO”: an infrastructure in Turin for active proximity tourism as a driver of territorial transformation for a healthy city

In the period of Covid-19, the current research aims at investigating new urban strategies, related to slow mobility routes, in order to explore the many places of interest that are located in our cities, enhancing them as opportunities to explore new possibilities for active, proximity and knowledge tourism. The current pandemic situation forces us to redesign our “playground”, in terms of distances and daily movements in the city: home-work, home-school and for recreational activities related to leisure, reconsidering the many already existing opportunities of places that are located nearby our homes. The research investigates the case study of the circle line “AbbracciaTO”, in the municipality of Turin, as a design-oriented urban strategy, able to connect places of interest, exploiting the potential of linear connections along the four rivers passing through the city (rivers: Po, Dora Riparia, Sangone and Stura) and the green spaces already present in the city (parks, gardens, tree-lined avenues etc.). From the methodological point of view, the itinerary, 60 km long, has been drawn through mapping techniques, by combining the top-down approach (geospatial data management with GIS tool) and bottom-up approach (street-level survey with GPS). The whole itinerary allows exploring the city with different eyes, keeping together heterogeneous elements such as well-known cultural heritage (including UNESCO sites), museums, contemporary architecture, industrial archaeology sites with parks, monumental trees, urban orchards, factories and new urban development and refurbishment sites, even located along the marginal areas of the city. The pleasantness degree of the route has been evaluated by combining the experience in the urban environment with the experience in the open spaces.