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The Conference
In the introductory address the President of the Emilia-Romagna Regional Authority Vasco Errani stressed that the theme of stations is strategic for the city because it is closely bound up with urban quality, quality of the air and the transport system. "It is an important challenge to reconstruct the competitiveness of the territorial system. The aim of the Region is to create a network linking the cities of the territory and this necessitates a closely knit approach involving institutional cooperation." He then added that "the node of mobility and urban and environmental quality is an element of strategic innovation. Italy is prepared to accept the important European challenges and the competition between territories is becoming increasingly difficult. In this context, Emilia Romagna has to act as protagonist, staking its future on the added value of quality: the Region means to play its part together with the city." The regional officer for Mobility and Transport, Alfredo Peri, pointed out the interest in resuturing the two fundamental functions of stations, as transport and urban poles: "The challenge is to design and govern these small-scale systems to achieve a new urban quality and more efficient forms of transport. The cities and their administrations have already shown they have understood this." He dealt with the theme of congestion: "In Italy it is very heavy, since we are one of the most motorized countries in the world. The fact of having a diffused system of settlement has created and is creating further difficulties, since often the infrastructures arrive when urban development has already gone ahead. The predicament to be dealt with is that of resources, which are in short supply, and which need to be invested in projects and choices adapted to the development of the territory. A possible solution? Intermodal transport, which is the basis on which stations are built or restructured and which stands at the centre of the Regional policy." The introduction by the institutional representatives of the Region was followed by addresses by Felicia Bottino (president of Oikos Centro Studi), by Daniele Pini (who shares with Felicia Bottino the scientific responsibility for the research) and by Filippo Boschi, a researcher with Oikos. In this first address the architect Bottino laid the emphasis on the strategic importance of the work by describing its leading features and dwelling on the principal objectives proposed for the creation of a network of the regional cities. Prof. Pini illustrated the salient aspects that emerged from an analysis of the local contexts and underlined the comparison with the European achievements analysed in the research. The architect Boschi further stressed and described principles and guidelines of the project for certain case studies exemplified in relation to the urban context. A broad survey of the subjects dealt with in this section is available on the page devoted to research. The morning's work ended with a round table with the participation of various mayors and administrators of the cities involved in the research. The afternoon's proceedings were opened by the experts invited to present significant examples of their professional activity on the European level: Christoph Ingenhoven presented a picture of the Stuttgart 21 program and his own project for the new mainline station of Stuttgart (illustrated in the photo alongside). Alexis Bourrat, of the Santiago Calatrava firm, presented a survey of the stations completed by Santiago Calatrava in various parts of the world and concluded by commenting on a video that illustrated the project for the new medium-sized station in the Po valley to be built for the high-speed line near Reggio Emilia (the project will be documented in a forthcoming update). The day was concluded with a round table that brought together
representatives of the Railways, Building Contractors, and Industrial
Associations.
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