Abstract
Metropolitan transformations of the Palermo as a Mediterranean city, guided by envisioning it as a ‘fluid’ gateway city, have been seen as an example for the planning of other such cities in Italy and Europe. The 2025 strategic vision for Palermo was inspired by three key components: (i) the relevance of Palermo as ‘hub territory’ in European level concerns in territorial and infrastructure development policies; (ii) the urban and regional experience with the concept ‘fluid city’ (envisioning the city as a portal and place of interaction and exchanges, not just in terms of goods and people); and (iii) new metropolitan vision produced by new regional and national legislation on metropolitan areas. This chapter develops an understanding of how the strategic spatial plan, approved by the City Council in 2016, selected these issues and connected them in one coherent vision, both at urban and metropolitan levels. The first sections trace the emergence of the plan. One concluding section reflects on the relevance of an innovative approach to the ‘smart city’ for Palermo’s urban strategies. Main conclusions summarise development and emphasise on a need for conceptual integration.
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- 1.
In the same years, before financial crisis of 2008, many other cities around Europe provided some solutions in order to integrate ports and urban contexts.
These cities worked in reason of their rank and their position: the large port-cities, the cities in which the relationship between city and harbour is producing a new way to live the sea; the riverfront cities in which the commercial port has modified its hierarchy; the city builds a new identity based on a kick-off event (Ronsivalle 2016).
As in Ronsivalle (2016), these cities are divided in three groups: the large port-cities, the cities in which the relationship between city and harbour is producing a new way to live the sea, the riverfront cities in which the commercial port has modified its hierarchy and the city builds a new identity based on a kick-off event.
The first group is composed, for example, by cities as Rotterdam and Hamburg: the relevance of the port and the weakness of the city are harmonized in a strong change of urban and portal policy.
The second group is composed by cities like Amsterdam, Barcelona, Lisboa, Genova, Marseille, Trieste, Valencia: the split between city and harbour is now solved by integration policies and strategic actions on urban regeneration.
The third group is composed by Bilbao, Bordeaux, Liverpool, Lyon, Newcastle upon Tyne, Sevilla: they were riverfront cities with a commercial or industrial harbour, nowadays they are cities that radically changed the general development strategy. In all these cities, however, waterfront policies start from the reticular context they generate: they are not only wonderful places with sea-side pedestrian streets or museums.
- 2.
See data and evaluations from Urban@it (2016).
- 3.
The culture policy for Palermo is viewed from the perspective of integration and multiculturalism. The ‘Palermo Charter on International Human Mobility’ was approved in 2015 by the city to overcome barriers to international human mobility. The Palermo Charter is not just an international document or poster of which the city is a promoter, but it is the vision of the city of the future. It is the key through which Palermo builds its ever-evolving identity and opens up a new horizon for the Mediterranean, in the centre of which is Palermo, the capital.
- 4.
The term ‘hyper-metropolis’ is like the strategic concept of HyperCatalunya. The study called HyperCatalunya promoted by Generalitat de Catalunya, Institut Català del Sòl in 2003, sought to identify the potential of Catalonia as city. The project was undertaken in conjunction with specialists in the different strata of information that configure the territory (nodes, networks and environments) with the aim of discovering new categories of projects with which to address the habitability of a territory in the process of urbanisation. See also Gausa (2009). Multi-Barcelona/Hiper-Catalunya. Hacia un nuevo abordaje de la ciudad y el territorio contemporaneos. List, Barcelona.
- 5.
The existence of an active relationship between urban strategies and land use might seem obvious, but in Palermo the lack of synchrony in the planning of the various types of planning has often made it impossible to integrate.
- 6.
The technical and economic feasibility of these ideas were covered in the last phase of the Strategic Plan.
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Ronsivalle, D. (2020). Integrating Experiences: Palermo Mediterranean Gateway City. Identity and Innovation. In: Lingua, V., Balz, V. (eds) Shaping Regional Futures. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23573-4_15
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