Re-read the urban complexity into planning tools through the definition of urban proximity systems. The case study of Mantova.

The term ‘proximity’ can be interpreted as an awareness responding to the critical issues highlighted by the contemporary city and as a strategy capable of managing and implementing the social phenomena linked to urban complexity. Given that proximity has been a central concept in recent years, the question raised is how proximity as a strategy can be technically and practically integrated into traditional planning tools. This concept represents a key objective for City Administrations because it provides them with the opportunity to address different perspectives of cities. ‘Proximity’ describes a field of application that has already been analysed in the past; looking back, indeed, it is possible to recognized that references alluding to this concept are consolidated and shared by many researchers. As strategy it also allows us to imagine urban regeneration processes reshaping a dynamic city with diversified functions, a mix of public and green spaces, residential areas, productive and commercial activities, linked by slow mobility. The search for greater proximity is a key parameter in the New Territorial Plan (PGT) of Mantova. The New Territorial Plan of Mantova, particularly the Service Plan included in it, is intended to ensure a balanced network between qualitative services and people in the process to redesign new places. Before proposing proximity as a strategy, in the first period of the research it was necessary to identify a "Knowledge Framework", a functional tool to analyse the resources of the territory and to understand people living there; and this was crucial for defining whether the conditions allowing us to create ‘a city of proximity’ in Mantova. Thus, the approach was based on two lines of work: the first aimed at verifying the adequacy of the services offered in terms of urban proximity, being aware also of the intangible ones; the second directed at studying new profiles of socio-demographic characterization that describe the fragilities of the residents living in Mantova. It turned out that the traditional articulation of the city in elementary urban units, i.e. neighbourhoods, was not sufficient to re-read the urban complexity in terms of ‘proximity’. A proximity-oriented system is necessarily measured by the need to reorganise units with their functional autonomy within the territory, relating each other in a polycentric vision. The necessity to broaden the proper meaning of such urban units and to find another term to identify this complexity gradually became evident. Initially, the term "urban identity areas" was chosen for identifying strategies capable of reading the new issues; later, these autonomous units were identified as "urban proximity systems" because they describe different modes of urban functioning. Indeed, they represent areas that are heterogeneous in terms of morphological, spatial, and social characteristics and that could define some proximity relations, recognised as essential for an articulated system of identity polarities. Due to recent challenges faced by contemporary cities, it is essential to consider proximity into planning tools to recompose the urban settlement from an urbanistic perspective and from the point of view of communities that live in it.