Architettura e transizione ecologica nell’era delle tecnologie digitali

‘The Countryside’ – a polemically generic term that Rem Koolhaas has recently used to reposition debates about our cities to those of rural areas. While the term has been posited as ‘new’, it is, in reality, a well established mode of thinking. Through notions such as the peri-urban for example, geographers, sociologists, architects, urban designers and regional economists have all debated the urban-rural relationship for several decades. Under this framework we are obliged to consider the city and its architecture on its own terms, but also address the ‘rural’ in its particular context and, importantly, explore the parallels and mutual influences at play. According to this logic, the social, cultural, planning and design issues relevant in our cities find parallels outside the city fringe. The actual refreshments of the Right to the City proposed by Henri Lefebvre in his seminal book in 1968 concerns about land rights issue. For example, gentrification resembles the pressures on arable lands through urban expansion. Thus, the sustainability of our buildings and communities is directly connected to the implementation of the sustainability of rural communities. While the cities worldwide are undoubtedly focal points of economic growth and innovation, a key theme emerging from EU recent published documents (European Green Deal) is the pivotal role of green architecture and ecological transition for economic and social development against the threats that urbanisation itself could bring in terms of sustainable growth. The task facing EU is immense. European experts (New European Bauhaus) have underlined their concerns regarding the impact of cities along with the massive problems of environmental pollution, water and waste management, property prices, transportation and rural-urban divide. Providing health and education facilities to the rising number of rural-urban challenges will be difficult. With its beautiful and fragile landscape and heritage, these challenges are even truer for Italian territory from north to south. The study of Italian urbanisation requires a novel point of view. In particular we believe a shift is required from ubanisation being studied from a large growing city perspective to a rural-urban viewpoint focusing on the transformation of rural area including villages and small towns. Due to the unique scale the result of rapid transformations in these hybrid areas is a semi-equilibrium that is neither totally urban nor rural. In Italy as well as in many EU regions, rural areas are witnessing a radical change of their population and technological activities (ISTAT 2021). Two strategies may be implemented to meet this goal. First, the improvements of rural living standards will serve to improve the lives of rural inhabitants. Second, the improvements of living standards in small towns and villages, and encouraging people to remain or even move to them will create more benefits for the whole urban population.