Conference Proceedings
LIVING LANDSCAPES |
Landscapes for Living
Section 4 | Living-Moving through Places

In Europe, urban sprawl is different from the American context. Nevertheless, it represents a dominating trend in contemporary European territories. The functioning of these territories is difficult to understand, according to classical town planning approaches. Urban rhythms and temporalities become more complex; cities are not univocal organisms anymore; new mobilities engender new dynamics and new forms. Hence, motion becomes a fundamental category to understand these territories. In fact, their identity is not placed anymore in morphological characterization, but rather in processes and in collective and individual dynamics. At this stage, these territories can be read as a nebula of fluxes. Fast fluxes cross these territories in an unconscious way and use cities as “anchor bolts”. On the other hand, slow fluxes seem to be more coherent with urban materiality.

In those territories, living solutions are increasingly individualized: the inhabitants define themselves more likely in relation to their own experiences, use or consumption of what surrounds them, rather than in relation to a community. In those territories, the prevailing element seems to be the loss of something: loss of borders, loss of identity, loss of social cohesion.
Scattered territories have en elusive nature. These phenomena have been named in many different ways: spread city, città diffusa, entre-ville... A lack of interpretation points out.
 

The papers which are presented in this section aim to develop these topics on different levels. They question themselves on new interpretative tools and on analytical approaches required to understand scattered territories. What are their dynamics, their localization? Does the observation of these territories allow a critique to modern urbanism? In which way the notion of planning is called into question?

In different ways, several papers of this section point out the need and the haste of understanding these territories. On an epistemological plan, those papers question the utility and the efficiency of contemporary design strategies. Even though urban sprawl has different forms in Europe, it remains a key factor in understanding contemporary territories and their ways of life.

LIST OF CONTENTS | SECTION 4
LIVING - MOVING THROUGH PLACES /
ABITARE DIFFUSO E ABITARE IN MOVIMENTO
Section edited by Luna D’Emilio, Silvia Minichino, Andrea Saladini, Matteo Scamporrino, Chiara Serenelli

• Dynamic geographies of desire’s territories
Emanuela Nan
• Campagna urbanizzata or sprawl? Images from the Florentine conurbation 
Jacopo Zetti
• Landscape and renewable energy policies toward territorial transformation
Rosalba D’Onofrio, Massimo Sargolini
• Landscape and renewable energy policies toward territorial transformation
Silvia Minichino
• Campagna abitata. contemporary peripheral areas between cities and open spaces
Fabrizio Esposito 
• Urban landscapes on the Aurelia road: the Apuan-Versilia town
Emanuela Morelli
• Urban diffused settlements in Romagna. The role of the street and the identity of the public space
Enrico Brighi
• The scattered city: descriptions for a project   
Maurizio Morandi, Luna d`Emilio
• The mechanic of the new landscape
Daniel Screpanti, Piernicola Carlesi