Daniele Fanzini

Politecnico di Milano | Polimi · Department of Building and Environment Sciences and Technology BEST

This study applies transformative technologies, specifically Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and environmental psychology tools, within the Yangzhou Canal area, enhancing public space utility and resident satisfaction. Using a mixed-methods approach, including a survey with 213 responses and field observations, we explored the socio-psychologi...

As urban populations continue to grow, cities are compelled to tackle new challenges of a social, economic, and environmental nature. Therefore, it is necessary to limit what has been hindering the sustainable development of cities to overcome them and ensure their future prosperity. Since cities also depend on local and regional material and immat...

The regulations viewed as a system of recognised and agreed values must take into consideration the complexity of the relationship between humankind and the environment. This presents an ethical problem with regards to the collective moral conduct during the design of the project and the definition of adequate methodologies to support this dimensio...

This contribution acknowledges minor cultural heritage as a living heritage and proposes its valorization as a means to ensure the sustainable development of cities and territories. It also considers co-design as a tool through which communities and stakeholders can be involved in addressing the challenges of their urban environment. Moreover, this...

In recent years, cultural heritage has taken up a broader purpose in Europe, becoming a substantial tool for social enhancements and economic gains. One of the bigger purposes of cultural heritage is its relationship with the education sector. Despite the efforts made to recognize the potential of cultural heritage in education, we cannot turn a bl...

The city, a place of contemporary living par excellence, challenges the planner by making it necessary to adapt progressively quicker to changes and to overcome the traditional design approach linked to the modern idea of the industrial city. Indeed, living in non-stationary contexts, the complexity of problems nowadays requires a new planning ende...

This chapter collects the outcome of an articulated program of activities whose results are based on an inductive-deductive research methodology. Interviews with experts, analysis of international case studies, video interviews and field work, have supported the material included in the previous chapters and provided the tools to understand the pro...

The chapter presents the theoretical aspects that led to the urban reactivation definition and conceptualization. The analysis contains premises for the definition of the project methodology described in Chap. 2 as well as for the identification of the theoretical and practical issues that are still unresolved. In summary, the chapter investigates...

The chapter investigates the tools of urban reactivation, those supported by social innovation, meaning the use of forms of sharing and cooperation to valorize common goods and satisfy the common needs of society. For this reason, an important part of this chapter is devoted to the topic of participatory design for promoting a genuine collaborative...

The pandemic crisis has definitively exposed the limits of a development model that the crisis of the new millennium had already amply demonstrated. Urban commerce has been heavily affected by the polycrisis, requiring innovative solutions to overcome it. In Saint-Germain-en-Laye (SGL), the problem was addressed through a relaunch project aimed at...

This paper focuses on the relationship between the reactivation of the built environment and social innovation. This theme is investigated through the triad: "project, technology and creativity", which at the operational level of research, leads to the paradigm of the active protection of patrimony. The research documents possible ways of using com...

This article provides insights on the urban regeneration project conduced in the densely populated centre of the “Costanzo Ciano” neighbourhood of Piacenza. Financed by MIBAC - Ministry of Heritage and Culture through the Creative Living Lab programme, the project is configured as a participatory urban regeneration action (Placemaking) aimed at tes...

Information technology touches all the main activities that orbit Cultural Heritage, including management, communication, monitoring and conservation. In particular, advanced digital tools can help the process of preservation, fostering a participatory process connecting diverse experts with various skills and educational backgrounds, and empowerin...

Starting from a PRIN 2015 study, the paper addresses the themes of adding value to public spaces, quality to the urban landscape, redeveloping degraded areas and proposing a sustainable and resilient design approach to cope with the effects of climate change. Specifically, this study focuses on the key role public space can play in urban resilience...

This contribution illustrates some possible applications of futures studies – more specifically of the anticipative processes – in the regeneration of the built environment, in relation to other contemporary issues like sustainable development, strategic planning, creativity and major events.

Present times are characterised by increasing levels of unpredictability, uncertainty and instability with a background of accelerated rhythms of change and of long-term material, but also ideological, political and spiritual crisis situations leading to frequent paradigm shifts. These circumstances render Futures Studies and anticipative processes...

This contribution contains an analysis of the relationship between theory and practice in architecture, started from the particular similarity between scientific and design research and intended to nurture the debate around the possible evolution of the disciplinary tools of Architectural Technology. The motivation is given by the necessity to fac...

There is consensus among researchers are recognizing that managing and projecting in complexity multidimensionality (Manzini, Baule, & Bertola, 2004) represents one of the mains challenges and constants of contemporaries’ processes of innovation. This systemic distinguishing peculiarity makes impossible to standardize the design processes because e...

This paper refers to the theme of urban regeneration in the long term perspective, studying the particular intersection area between the future studies and the processes defining the contemporary design culture. The goal is to propose a first delimitation of the core of a research field that could be called ‘project anticipation’ and possible compe...

Recent European housing policies have been focussing on the attractiveness of cities and their growth potential. In accordance with the European social model, homes are considered a primary asset and a fundamental right, as well as a basic component of human dignity. On the basis of this more general approach to the housing issue, new draft laws ha...

Now, innovation is given increasing attention in all fields: in industry as in the cultural sector, in private companies and at the level of public institutions, on markets but also in the scientific and technological research. The "philosophy of innovation" slightly took the role of economic development engine, as well as of cultural growth lever,...

Radical revision and the cognitive renewal of the values which form the fundamental reasons of protection can turn cultural heritage into the driving force for developing a region. If we substantiate the paradigms of protection in the relationship that cultural heritage builds with a territory and its inhabitants, we could consider protection as a...

Nowadays many small Italian municipalities have to face a new and important challenge: to turn or to bring back to a "community" their territory once again. This issue, considered by Adriano Olivetti for his entrepreneurial project, involves both the global dimension among international relations and the enhancement of local culture and its heritag...

The role of cultural assets in stimulating tourism seems obvious, but is difficult to assess because of the large number and diversity of the activities comprised in the “culture” phenomenon and the lack of adapted tools. This paper is meant to contribute to the understanding of the relationship between cultural heritage and tourism and to the adva...

Today, the environmental sustainability and development model are linked to culture, urban regeneration and new economy. Conceptualized in the 90s, cultural industry has flourished with the affirmation of the creative economy and new systemic economic theories and is now advancing towards models of creative cities and regions representing the spati...

Considering the growing importance acquired by the intangible elements coupled with the unprecedented prevalence of the intellectual component of goods over their physical production, this research investigates the capacity of culture to foster identities, strengthen communities, support businesses and propel sustainable territorial development. Fo...