Description
The thesis discusses the phenomenon of bottom-up urban regeneration, withparticular reference to projects employing cultural strategies. This particular form of regeneration, considered alternative to more traditional ones, despite having been acknowledged as effective by a variety of professional and academic actors, is often misunderstood, and its effectiveness in relation to the declared objectives has rarely been demonstrated in a comprehensive, scientific way. Self-organized, spontaneous, and informal initiatives in the urban environment have been recognized by academics as proper forms of urbanism developed by common
people. However, these are often considered temporary and not capable of producing structural, large-scale, and long-term effects. This thesis, instead, investigates to what extent initiatives developed by bottom-up actors may be effective in relation to one of the more ambitious goals in the urban environment -urban regeneration- considering three main categories of impacts: physical, social and economic. Projects employing cultural strategies in their development have been investigated specifically, because they are considered to be more likely to be capable of triggering regeneration. As demonstrated by academic literature, in fact, urban regeneration strategies often rely on cultural activities to lead to more comprehensive urban improvements. The thesis analyses and evaluates the impact of two projects considered European best-practices of bottom-up cultural urban regeneration: Farm Cultural Park in Favara, Sicily, and NDSM wharf in Amsterdam. The first arose from the attempt of two citizens to trigger the regeneration of the historic South Italian town where they lived; the second from the activities developed by a self-organized group in order to regenerate a former industrial area of the Amsterdam harbour, with additional involvement of public actors. The two cases, despite the different characteristics of the contexts in which they are located, and the dissimilar development paths followed, both represent ways in which bottom-up initiatives may trigger wider regeneration dynamics. The research topic is thus unfolded, acknowledging all its complexity. The thesis describes the main characteristics of the transformative process, the role played by cultural activities, the conditions that may hinder or support the projects, and the spatial effects produced, depicting a portion of the multi-faceted picture of bottom-up cultural regeneration in Europe.
| Period | 19 Oct 2022 |
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| Examinee | Alberto Squizzato |
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| Degree of Recognition | International |