Abstract
Modern urbanism is called to face current challenges ranging from intensive demographic growth, economic and social stagnation to resources salvation and climate changes. Under the broader scope of sustainability, we argue that the transition to a holistic perspective of smart and regenerative planning and design is the way to face and yet to prevent these urban challenges. In doing so, we adopt systematic thinking to study the complexity of urban metabolisms at an urban place scale, emphasizing the ongoing coevolution of social-cultural-technological and ecological processes. Focusing on urban places, we give a city or region the sense of a place of stability, security, cultural and social interactions, and a sense of uniqueness. We plan and design innovative urban places that improve the environment and the quality of urban life, able to adapt and mitigate climate changes and natural hazards, leverage community spirit, and power a green-based economy. Designing the conceptual framework of smart and regenerative urban places we contribute to the field of modern urban studies helping practitioners, policymakers, and decision-makers to vision and adopt more environmental-friendly policies and actions using a user-centered approach.
Highlights
A city is an open system with interactions within the region and beyond, driven by endogenous and exogenous factors acting either short term or long term
Based on a literature review, we verified that the smart city concept is related to urban sustainability, and the regenerative design studies embrace sustainability to maintain a healthy state of urban systems and move one step further by allowing the urban systems to flourish and evolve
We verified that the concepts of urban smartness and urban regeneration had been studied separately in the pathway to reach sustainability
Summary
A city is an open system with interactions within the region and beyond, driven by endogenous and exogenous factors acting either short term or long term. Apart from factors like population growth and demographic changes the modern urbanization is essentially shaped by the impact of the international capital, the change to a new urban governance and institutional structures as well as by agglomeration forces [1]. These drivers stimulate changes in the scale, rate, location, form, and function of urbanization [1], generating spatial and temporal heterogeneity of social, biophysical and physical patterns and processes associated with physical, financial/economic, natural, human and social urban assets or resources [2].
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have