Innovazione e ibridazione funzionale per nuove infrastrutture autostradali a servizio del territorio locale. Scenari di progetto: l’Hybrid Park Innovation and functional hybridisation for new motorway infrastructure serving the local territory. Project scenarios: the Hybrid Park

The relationship between infrastructure and the local area is in constant transformation, as are planning models to integrate landscape protection and local development. Such models are infrequently applied in Italy, as motorway infrastructure still represents a “foreign body” in the local area and has struggled to evolve – in contrast to other European contexts – into a fully developed, multi-functional system of services capable of generating a diverse range of environmental, social and economic impacts.The new infrastructuresachievea strategic dimension for the local competitiveness when they become places marked by a high degree of permeability with the surrounding area, facilitating trade, combining new ways of selling goods both in terms of marketing and payment models,and offering a functional mix capable of providing adequate responses to a world of employment relations that are ever more “fluid” and less anchored to the physical concept of the workplace. An interesting opportunity to trial new patterns of relations between infrastructure, local areas and services is the recent initiative promoted by ENEL as part of the FUTUR-E project, with the launch of a design competition for the redevelopment of the Alessandria turbogas power plant situated beside the A21 Turin-Piacenza motorway. In this context, the project proposal developed by a group of researchers at the Politecnico of Milan envisages a possible detailed response backed by an economic feasibility study and firmly rooted in local production and social activities, in which the hybridisation of various functions represents a concrete opportunity to establish innovative infrastructure models which serve local areas and which can be replicated in other contexts.