City, Landscape, Infrastructure. Experimental fields in the dispersed metropolis

Abstract

The reactivation interventions of peripheral urban stations represent an important opportunity for urban regeneration and, more generally, offer a significant case study to develop reflections on the contemporary city dimension, on the meaning of public space, and on the role of urban design. The linear infrastructural system that spreads throughout the territory, the marginal spaces between the islands of the dispersed city, and the nodes that interconnect them constitute the urban materials at our disposal to trigger broader transformations on the territory and to define new relationships among city, landscape, and infrastructure.

From this perspective, Rome and its peri-urban landscape offer an exceptional testing ground. At the porous boundary between city and countryside, Rome reveals its distinctive metabolic capacity, where the remains of different eras, both natural and artificial, are constantly reused and reinterpreted by the communities that inhabit them, leading to the emergence of alternative forms of urbanity. Rome demonstrates, in its chaotic and imperfect nature and in the informality of some of its processes, how the interstitial space generated and discarded by the city itself is a valuable space as an urban reserve for experimentation, within which to reconfigure the fragmentation of urban fabrics and social relationships.