Davide Ponzini

• PhD in Urban Planning
• Professor (Associate) at Politecnico di Milano

Milan is undergoing significant transformations. Its city image and reputation as an international tourist destination have been on the rise, along with developments in its business and real estate market. These transformations are often perceived as closely linked to the city’s cultural vibrancy and its two mega-events: the 2015 Expo and the upcom...

This chapter analyzes the evolving spatial model for past and future mega-events in Italy, their effects, and legacies, drawing on a literature review and several case studies such as the European Capital of Culture of Genoa 2004, the Winter Olympics of Turin 2006, and the Milan Expo 2015, before the Winter Games of Milan-Cortina 2026. Specific att...

Art museums and cultural institutions, more generally, have often been perceived as special components of cities. Multiple dimensions contribute to understanding their role and effect on citizens and visitors. This chapter covers four major perspectives by providing essential discussion and examples, drawing on international urban studies and plann...

Despite the proposed ‘certainty’ in a city or region hosting a mega-event, there has long been issues of uncertainty surrounding the planning and implementation of what have until now essentially been mega-projects. Large events have found a variety of ways to adapt and respond to unforeseen circumstances due to political conflicts, planning of ove...

The relationship between mega-events and cities is changing due to growing criticism and delegitimization regarding the increase of investments towards new venues and infrastructures. This contribution argues that it is useful to learn jointly from different types of both sporting and cultural mega-events. For instance, the European Capital of Cult...

The European Capital of Culture (ECoC) is a well-known and long-standing European policy that annually awards the title of Capital to two or more cities that deliver cultural initiatives throughout one year of celebrations. The programme has been hosted by over 60 cities throughout Europe during the last 35 years. Some host cities have used the ECo...

The period between 1990 and 2020 witnessed an increase in transnational modes of architectural and urban design, especially with reference to prominent buildings and areas. Among these, the use of famous architectural firms has spread to globalizing cities across Europe, North America, and Asia. In many cases, spectacular buildings designed by a sm...

The chapters in this volume offered diverse perspectives on complex urban cases and issues. The investigations regarding the interplays among star architecture, media, urban effects and heritage (as well as the links across them) provide insights that add new knowledge regarding the processes of making exceptional projects and more generally about...

In the last three decades, urban decision makers in the Western world increasingly promote and build exceptional architecture projects such as iconic museums, spectacular infrastructures or public spaces not only for branding their city image and boosting media attention. Star architecture remains somehow a vague term, and the attention to the exce...

This contribution is the first attempt to provide a systematic study of the spread of culture-led waterfront projects in Europe that are designed (or inclusive of substantial elements designed) by major transnational firms, often labelled as star architects. We introduce a new method for mapping transnational projects and firms, including a databas...

Since the 1990s, European and North American cities started urban regeneration schemes aimed at capturing the positive side effects of heritage sites along with other cultural facilities. There now exists a wealth of studies explaining the mechanisms, networks, and effects of this approach. In recent years, many historic cities of China have initia...

Cities across the world have been resorting to star architects to brand their projects, spark urban regeneration and market the city image internationally. This book shifts the attention from star architects to star architecture, arguing that the process of deciding about and implementing relevant architectural and urban projects is not the product...

This chapter reflects on contemporary logics of technical knowledge production, replication, and transmission questioning the operating of international design firms in autocratic countries. It does so in order to argue that today the technocratic logics of policy making have a global profile, because they prosper and diffuse through the transfer o...

Recent debates regarding urban policy mobilities have shed light on the transfer and adaptation of similar sets of measures and projects. However, limited attention has been given to the local decision-making processes and to how democratic or autocratic modes of governance affect the adaptation. This paper focuses on the transnational spreading of...

The urban Gulf busts up past paradigms for understanding urban development. Markets are only partially operative, democracy is absent and civic engagement is weak. But some of its large and sophisticated cities are now forces in the world. At the concrete level of development, there is less blockage from planners, regulations, or work-place rules....

Gulf urban dynamics challenge analytic paradigms, whether from market analyses, democratic theory, or real politik. Most noticeably for us, land-use and spatial patterning operate in distinctive ways that follow from the region’s particular systems of kinship, wealth extraction and historic conjunctures. Always around in some variant, Gulf city arr...

A global elite of ‘starchitects’ are setting the terms of contemporary urban form, often ebullient and, in the Gulf context, made capable of satisfying superlative claims. Beyond symbolic ambitions, they also share more concrete traits: abundant financial resources, strong and monocratic political backing, and weak planning regulation. Gulf-based r...

This chapter explores the notion and practice of the smart city, with a geographical focus on Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates. Smart-city projects are understood and discussed as the products of overarching political economies whose objectives are pursued through a fast-track urbanisation. The case of Abu Dhabi shows that sm...

Despite mega-events being long perceived as great opportunities by urban policy makers, several cities have recently withdrawn bids for the Olympic games. The disconnect between the planning of mega-events and the urban environment is a reoccurring argument in public debate, but missing in research. In this article, we consider how the relationship...

Planning literature has generally presented strategic planning as an alternative to top-down land-use planning and modernist urban design. Spatial strategies have been depicted as the product of more or less formalised processes of strategic planning, without fully acknowledging the nexus with other forms and scales of planning and large-scale proj...

There has been a tendency to portray municipalities as prone recipients of transnational growth-oriented development initiatives. The processes of transferring transnational urban development models are increasingly depicted as progressively de-politicized, with an emphasis on ‘strategic projects’ over long-term general planning. This study investi...

The ECoC program provides a broad and long-term set of examples, the paper will limit itself by briefly presenting 3 case studies in order to reflect upon the tensions and solutions implied by using flagship projects for mega events in historic cities. The paper concludes by highlighting some of the most pressing research and practice challenges of...

Thanks to new technological advancements and due to global economic arrangements, today architectural firms simultaneously practice in multiple countries. Extremely complex projects, such as iconic museums or tall skyscrapers are often awarded to architects who are internationally known. The role and contribution of such architectural and urban pro...

The use of brand architecture today is widespread since it is supposed to have broad positive effects such as improving the urban environment, skyline and media visibility. This article examines some of these assumptions by comparing two case studies: Agbar Tower in Poblenou, Barcelona and Doha Tower in the West Bay District in Doha, Qatar. Atelier...

Culture-driven urban and regional strategies have grown since the 1980s in Europe and beyond. Countless initiatives for creative clusters, cultural quarters and culture-led urban policies have mushroomed since the mid-1990s. Being exceptionally rich and dense in cultural amenities and institutions, creative production and cultural consumption, Ital...

Since 2008, cities in the Western world have been under stress due to pressures that have been labelled as the 'crisis' and its 'consequences'. Despite the fact that several years have passed, international planning debates have not fully highlighted what we have learned from this challenging phase. How and to what extent have these stresses and ch...

Data la complessità dell’ambiente urbano e delle sue trasformazioni, i processi di rigenerazione urbana sono oggetto di studio multidisciplinare da parte di diversi studiosi, tra cui pianificatori, geografi, economisti e sociologi. A partire dagli anni 2000, una questione che emerge dal confronto tra le varie discipline è quella della città creativ...

When dealing with cultural built heritage, the enhancement strategies are generally rooted on the history and based on the embedded values of cultural goods themselves, rather than on the multiplicity of their tangible and intangible values. Furthermore, the current state of the art in cultural heritage management lacks of an appropriate legislatio...

The paper proposes a three-part system of cultural governance for sustainable cities: culturally sensitive sustainability governance processes and structures, a cultural lens on all public policies/decisions and a sustainability approach to cultural policy/planning and governance.Keywords: urban cultural policy, urban sustainable development, cultu...

In the past 15 years, cultural and creative industries have been center-stage in international and national debates. Policymakers promoted culture and creativity in dedicated initiatives and the need for evidence-based policy has prompted governments to undertake broad-scope cultural mapping, in order to identify spatially-defined systems of cultur...

Since the early 2000s an increasing number of global and second or third tiers cities have been promoting a wide array of policies under the same banner of the 'creative city'. The chapter proposes an extensive review and discussion of existing literature, with specific reference to the socioeconomic and urban features and to the failures and criti...

Despite the fact that the strategic dismissal of a number of military bases has been affecting contemporary urban and rural areas and becoming a new challenge for city planning and policy-making, little attention has been paid to this complex topic at an international level. Several authors have suggested that collaborative planning processes are c...

Modern urban planning and design implicitly or explicitly assumed the existence of the public sphere in order to define its goals and means and to legitimise planning choices. Over the last decades, critical trends, such as social interest fragmentation, economic globalisation and institutional subsidiarity, have deeply transformed contemporary soc...

This chapter discusses the combination of structure plans and urban megaprojects. It shows the characteristics and shortcomings of this combination in different urban contexts, in Western as well as in emerging countries. The chapter draws on case studies of megaprojects and urban planning processes in different cities: Abu Dhabi, Milan, and others...

Planning experiences in Milan, Rome and Bologna are presented as critical laboratories for discussing new directions in research at the crossroads between urban planning and urban design. Drawing on these cases, it is suggested that issues tied to physical design are crucial in managing contemporary planning processes. The medium- and long-term str...

What are the social reasons for urban planning activity? How can we discuss issues, principles, values and guidelines in urban planning action today? The title of these notes is drawn from a series of three seminars which we organised and held between 2011 and 2012, with support from the Diap. These notes accompany Susan Fainstein's essay at the be...

Geopolitical changes over the last twenty years and new forms of war and military technology have had unnoticed effects on contemporary towns and cities. Areas and properties used by the military in very different ways and locations have become available for new civilian functions. Similar questions have been addressed by various disciplines, which...

The ideas to reflect upon provided by the conversion policies analysed and by the plans presented are certainly many and varied. This paper discusses them by looking at the three subjects proposed in the service and by outlining future investigative and experimental activities in Italy and Europe. In the current period of crisis, the convergence be...

In the last decade, scholars and policymakers have paid greater attention to the role of famous designers’ pieces of architecture not only in regenerating urban areas but also in defining a positive and communicative image in the global economic competition among cities. Taking into account the general background of and socio-economic changes in We...

Public–private partnership (PPP) is currently sought by scholars and policy-makers as a tool for overcoming the financial crisis of the State and low performance in public administration. Also, it is deemed as an opportunity to bring added value to projects and their contents in order to meet new, emerging social demands. Despite the growing attent...

During the last decade, institutional changes in the cultural heritage sector triggered some fierce debate in Europe. This paper analyses the complex process of privatising cultural heritage and the arts in Italy, showing how the relationship between this process and urban regeneration policies is tacitly legitimising it, despite the harsh controve...

Following the introduction just outlined, part of the book will be dedicated to each of the most important issues. First (in Part II), it seems necessary to re-establish the paradigmatic framework of the “planning field” with reference to, and discussions of, the specific literature, in particular that of the second half of the twentieth century.

The idea of “planning theory,” which will be discussed in this book, mainly concerns the disciplinary thinking and practices that emerged during the last three decades of the twentieth century. Particular emphasis will be placed on the British and American movements inspired by the critique of existing traditions and having the goal of finding inno...

Uncertainty does not only concern the specific object of planning but radically affects its disciplinary tradition, which has been seeking autonomy since the late nineteenth century. In effect, the central theme might be identified as decision-making following appropriately defined methods such as those that are scientifically corroborated – like a...

Our hypothesis is that the main route passes through dialogue and constructive interaction among some of the cultural traditions of architecture, urban planning and policy studies. This contamination, as we have already hinted, may bring noteworthy innovations to the two fields in both theoretical and practical terms.

The positions described in the two previous chapters hinted at some crucial points outlining two possible founding paradigms. The first represents a more in-depth alternative to the methodological conception of the decision-centred view which, for a certain period, was successful in the United States and in Northern Europe.

The positions outlined in the two preceding chapters continued to lose importance towards the end of the last century, especially from the 1980s on. It appeared clear at the time that the evolution of contemporary society and politics required a new direction in planning. In the age of globalisation, certain basic relationships between places and f...

The long journey described in the preceding chapters does not necessarily lead to a common destination. In fact it seems to show the criticalities of the more influential paradigms that have been posited – their logical incoherence, both internal and mutual, their simplifications and cultural ambiguities, their modest practical implications and eff...

Whatever the model of social and urban regulation operating in a particular context, it cannot be denied that visioning activities carry out strategic functions. No complex reality can be developed through the simple aggregation of vested interests and programmes without running the risk of dissipating opportunities and diminishing planning effecti...

We do not have settled for the “plan that is possible in a given context” as sustained by Giovanni Astengo in the 1960s taking an alternative position to our conclusions in Part II (Astengo, 1966).

Whatever the spatial and social frame of reference, planning problems and tools always seem to be fraught with a substantial degree of uncertainty and ambiguity. This does not regard only the effectiveness of planning, but often its legitimacy, consensus and sustainability in real contexts. In spite of the discipline’s vast accumulated experience,...

The failure of the cultural programme outlined in the preceding chapter is confirmed, in our opinion, not only by concrete experiences but also by the evolution of planning theory. Healey and Hillier’s Reader, which we have cited several times (Hillier & Healey, 2008c), does not adopt the collaborative approach as the point of arrival, but is force...

“Planning is a messy, contentious field” (Campbell & Fainstein, 1996, p. 4) with no stable, convincing order according to well-defined disciplinary canons. Its boundaries are not clear and there is not even agreement on its central focus. It consists in a variety of practices in which the planner can play multiple roles connected to functions and s...

A noteworthy distinction emerges from various experiences both in Italy and Europe and also from the other side of the Atlantic. There are planners, officers and politicians, who by conviction, habit or perhaps for rhetorical convenience, seem to confirm their formal faith in the supremacy of planning as the best method to organise urban developmen...

Great spatial development has always taken place “through urban projects” with only moderate coordination by planning tools or regional or sectoral policies. Relative autonomy is an intrinsic feature of this kind of “area-based project”. It cannot be annulled by the cogency of norms or by the need for consensus. It can only be managed by the politi...

This paper critically explores the 'politics of becoming' in a 'wannabe' creative city in the United States. It shows how, in Baltimore's policy sphere, Richard Florida's theory has served as an 'intellectual technology' aiming at the invention of a new macro-actor (the creative class), while related urban regeneration outcomes and prospects appear...

The intersection of urban and cultural policies has recently been at the center of international debate. The cultural planning approach argued that cultural policies can generally display positive effects in contemporary cities. The economic literature put forth spatial organization models of cultural institutions and producers, sometimes confirmin...

In several international debates and in policy-making practices, we can frequently find the case for the construction of museums, theaters, galleries and more generally for the implementation of cultural policies, assumed to induce positive effects on urban regeneration and appreciation. The paper critically observes these urban processes, highligh...