Quality Of Urban Systems Research Articles

Green is the colour. Standards, equipment and public spaces as paradigm for the Italian sustainable city

The speed of the urban systems is related with a series of social, economic, and environmental transformations bringing often to a critic state that needs the redefinition of urban elements and relationships, in order to guarantee quality and safety to the inhabitants’ lives. Related to the new spatial conditions of planning is the topic of urban equipment that is an open matter in the urban politics. Their relevance for Italian cities made them a symbol of democratization and quality of the cities, due to the obligatory of minimum quantities of spaces for public services. The 50 years from the issue of DM 1444 allows to express a series of evaluations on the role of the public equipment in the processes of urban transformation and governance. Starting from this analysis, the paper proposes adequate and updated solutions in terms of evolution of the standards categories and their quantitative and qualitative characteristics, deepening the role of the urban facilities as potential sources of innovation. The first part of the paper highlights some elements related to the long period of application of the law, and the results of this application in terms of increase and quality in the urban equipment of the city. The second part explores the motivations behind the need for a comprehensive updating of the subject, referring to concepts such as sustainability, and quality of urban systems. In the third part, starting from new requirements, new needs, new risks affecting urban systems, as well as from critical points of the Italian law structure, the paper proposes new categories of urban planning standards and the related functional requirements they must to satisfy.

Co-designing Urban Living Solutions to Improve Older People\u2019s Mobility and Well-Being

Mobility is a key aspect of active ageing enabling participation and autonomy into later life. Remaining active brings multiple physical but also social benefits leading to higher levels of well-being. With globally increasing levels of urbanisation alongside demographic shifts meaning in many parts of the world this urban population will be older people, the challenge is how cities should evolve to enable so-called active ageing. This paper reports on a co-design study with 117 participants investigating the interaction of existing urban spaces and infrastructure on mobility and well-being for older residents (aged 55 + years) in three cities. A mixed method approach was trialled to identify locations beneficial to subjective well-being and participant-led solutions to urban mobility challenges. Spatial analysis was used to identify key underlying factors in locations and infrastructure that promoted or compromised mobility and well-being for participants. Co-designed solutions were assessed for acceptability or co-benefits amongst a wider cross-section of urban residents (n = 233) using online and face-to-face surveys in each conurbation. Our analysis identified three critical intersecting and interacting thematic problems for urban mobility amongst older people: The quality of physical infrastructure; issues around the delivery, governance and quality of urban systems and services; and the attitudes and behaviors of individuals that older people encounter. This identified complexity reinforces the need for policy responses that may not necessarily involve design or retrofit measures, but instead might challenge perceptions and behaviors of use and access to urban space. Our co-design results further highlight that solutions need to move beyond the generic and placeless, instead embedding specific locally relevant solutions in inherently geographical spaces, populations and processes to ensure they relate to the intricacies of place.