Anticipating Urban Design Projects Impacts Starting from the Pedestrians' Experience

The paper presents a four years study, developed by a university research laboratory, that deals with the anticipation of outputs of urban transformations. The main aim of the conducted investigation was to explore the ability of different tools to anticipate specific impacts of urban design projects in an interdisciplinary way. In particular, the general themes investigated concerned visual appearance (composition) and environmental conditions, i.e. shadowing condition, using simulations. In addition a specific point of view was used: how is it possible to anticipate the outputs of a design project from a perceptual point of view? The research was conducted both in theoretical and experimental terms. For this reason a specific case study was analyzed. The required characteristic for the choice were: dimension and complexity (big urban project), importance for the city (centrality), implementation in a short time (project under construction). Besides studying the performance of the urban design project as a whole, we simulated it in order to clarify its output from an experiential point of view. To depict the perceptual impacts we used different typologies of simulations and we compared the possibilities and effectiveness of each one. Since this specific point of view was one of our main interests, a great attention was devoted to the tools that allow a dynamic description of the urban environment. Moreover, we were not focusing our attention on the functionality of the architectural projects alone, but on their cumulative effects on the urban environment. For this reason, we studied the output of the project starting from its local physical context (walking towards the project) and at the urban level (looking from a distance: changes in the skyline). The use of a great number of different kind of simulations were experimented on the case study according to their proper characteristics. Since each one has its own limits and vantages, a combined use has been shown to be preferable for a more comprehensive understanding. In order to check the effective usefulness of the tools in a definitive way, we present a survey that allows to compare the real output of the urban project, which is almost completed, and the simulated one. The comparison gives an important feedback about the real capacity of the tool, helps to improve the entire approach and contributes to complete the theoretical framework. This will be the basis for future work on simulation, but it will also be an occasion to demonstrate the potentiality of this approach in depicting some relevant outputs. This could improve the process of negotiation between public and private stakeholders, collaborating to the delivery of better public spaces.