Adaptive urban design to cope with heavy rainfall in the Historic Centre: a masterplan for Ferrara (Italy)

ABSTRACT

The paper addresses historic centre protection from climate change, presenting urban design guidelines for the adaptation of Ferrara. Ferrara is a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1995 as a Renaissance city with great historical, architectural, and cultural values. In recent years, the city has suffered from heatwaves and heavy rainfall. In particular, heavy rains flood the historical public spaces of the centre, putting inhabitants, shopkeepers, students and tourists at risk. The summer heat and flooding compromise the maintenance of the ancient fabrics, the historical gardens, and the liveability of the public space. These are crucial elements of Ferrara’s cultural heritage to which the guidelines for climate-proof planning have been addressed. The paper presents a synthesis of the literature review and best practices on climate change adaptation, and cultural heritage concept evolution. Secondly, it presents the analytical methodology used and the design solutions adopted to protect the public space of the historic centre. The research results are a site-specific urban-architectural actions oriented to adaptive urban design for the historic centre with three levels of intensity concerning the time needed to intervene on such a large area (about 400 hectares) and characterized by fragile structural, architectural, ecological and material qualities.

KEYWORDS:

• Adaptive urban design
• climate-proof planning
• masterplan
• nature-based solutions
• public space, historic centre, cultural heritage

Acknowledgments

I thank Nicola Colaninno and Alisia Tognon (Politecnico di Milano) for comments that greatly improved the manuscript. Moreover, I thank the team members from the National Association of Historic and Artistic Centres (Pasquale Barone, Giacinto Donvito, Giovanna Franco, Stefano F. Musso, Patrizia Rota, Stefano Storchi with Alberto Bolognese, Alessia Cardinale, Licia Felicioni, and Giulia Turci.) and Municipality of Ferrara (Alessandro Balboni, Beatrice Galassi, Fabrizio Magnani, Alessandra Piganti, Fulvio Rossi, Luca Roversi, Claudio Tassinari, and Davide Tumiati) for their fruitful collaboration and support in the project implementation activities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by Municipality of Ferrara. The paper presents the research outcomes to support the Municipality between 2018 and 2019 on Interreg Central Europe Project (Risk Assessment and Sustainable Protection of Cultural Heritage in Changing Environments, Pro-teCHt2save project.) development (grant number CE1127, ERDF funding: 1,787,110 € - http://www.interreg-central.eu/Content.Node/ProteCHt2save.html). The research was developed by the National Association of Historic and Artistic Centres (ANCSA Associazione Nazionale Centri Storico-Artistici). Marika Fior was the jointly responsible of the ANCSA working group. ANCSA’s activity was a cultural and technical support to Municipality of Ferrara. ANCSA was not a Partner Institutions of the European Project. The output of ANCSA’s research is a handbook for adapting Historic Center to Climate Change (Barone, P.; Donvito, G.; Fior, M.; Franco, G.; Musso, S. F.; Rota, P. Centri storici e adattamento ai cambiamenti climatici. Linee guida dal caso studio di Ferrara, ANCSA, Gubbio – PG, 2020).

Notes on contributors

Marika Fior

Marika Fior is an urban planner and Assistant Professor in Urban Planning and Urban Design at Sapienza Università di Roma. She holds a Ph.D. in Government and Territorial Design at Politecnico di Milano. Since 2015, Marika is a member of the National Association of Historic and Artistic Centres Board, and she has edited several researches for the association with particular attention to the contemporary condition of the Italian historic centres. She did many research activities at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies (Politecnico di Milano). She freelances for projects and research on urban design and planning.