Festival dell'architettura

In the wide-reaching but precise ambit of the theme “Architecture and the City”, which the Festival of Architecture assumed as a general condition for investigation right from its first edition, the study day dedicated to the ARCHITECTURE OF LINEAR CITIES allows a twofold reflection: on the theme of the relationship between infrastructure and the city in general, as a characterising element, among the diverse, the course of development of the linear city in the broadest sense, and on the linear settlement systems of polycentric cities, that characterize certain particular ambits of Italy (and not only) – such as the system of cities in Emilia (CittaEmilia or Roadtown E.R.), the Adriatic (Adriacottà, Metrolpoliriviera), the Veneto, the Lombard-Veneto or, on a lesser scale, the city of Rome’s great Ring Road or the Dutch Randstad – with the aim of reflecting on the rôle of the city (as a single entity but also as part of the single polycentric linear city) and on their possible integrated and coordinated development. Starting from the presentation of the book CittaEmilia, which published the proceedings of the Forum held at the Florence Academy of the Kent State University, and from the illustration of historical and phenomenological cases regarding the theme in general, the question that comes up for discussion can be put in these terms: is it possible that architecture as well as characterizing single cities, can give an identity to the polycentric linear city? By means of which models and tools?