The Mending Termini Station Method: The Strategic Planning of the City

Abstract

The aim of this study is to propose an adaptable, multidisciplinary and all-inclusive method, which considers the intervention on the infrastructure system and nodes as a strategic priority, in order to ensure a level of planning that allows the concatenation of subsequent interventions.

The development of a method is finalized to the implementation of the necessary actions to complete a strategic plan aimed at a radical transformation of the city. The case-study presented deals with Termini station and the city of Rome, with the long-term objective of reversing the trend in mobility patterns and enhancing the area within the Aurelian Walls (UNESCO heritage). The current state of infrastructure systems and nodes offers possibilities, sometimes supported by a debate rooted in time, able to address the interests of various actors. Therefore, by establishing the intervention on the infrastructure as the first step, necessary to recalibrate the balance between the urban systems, it is possible to preview direct effects on the nodes and on the city that allow to further transformations. Among these, the recovery of urban land is a fundamental step of the method, achievable through the burying of part of the infrastructure or stations. The feasibility of projects of this scale is often linked to the liberalisation of the railway system, which has given ownership of the areas to public companies governed by private law, making them promoters and guarantors of the transformations, through agreements with public authorities.

On the base of the transformation of the infrastructural system, it is possible to carry out interventions on mobility, on the environmental system and of urban requalification, able to establish the main lines of development of the city. These interventions can be extended in time, in order to make urban transformation sustainable and less radical, and must work as catalysts to achieve the strategic objectives preponed. To provide a guideline for future projects, Mending Termini Station ends with the planning of a new urban polarity on the area of the ex-railway yard, a proposal that defines limits and prescriptions regarding services, functions, landscape and formal relationship with the context.

Methodological research is built through a critical re-reading of virtuous examples that, at an international level, have triggered large-scale urban regeneration processes. In the Maine-Montparnasse project in Paris, the objective was reached through the replacement of the 19th century station, the insertion of new managerial, commercial and residential functions, and a new urban park above the tracks. The positive effect of this intervention still brings a continuous investment to make Montparnasse an innovative, sustainable, technological and strongly identitary pole. The King's Cross Central project in London was born in response to a phase of serious decline in the area, using the new link to the Channel Tunnel as an important incentive for urban regeneration and an opportunity for revitalization of the entire district. Starting from the recovery of the stations, the area becomes a new hub for mixed use and the enhancement of public spaces is considered a priority to ensure an improvement in urban life and economic development. The Seven Yards of Milan project is the result of the possibility of converting disused railway areas, which are interesting for their size and strategic location. The fundamental objective is to rethink the way of conceiving the city itself, in a multicentric and integrated way, through a planning, also in terms of time, of the interventions.

The proven validity of this methodology is spontaneous if the basis of the process is a strategic planning aimed at achieving the macro-objective of building the city of tomorrow. The further development of this study fits, in part, into the strategic planning of processes that have the same basic objectives. The applications, which show interested results, are the Zuidasdok project for Amsterdam and the competition for the redevelopment of public spaces in the Charles De Gaulle airport district in Paris.