Genoa is a city with a rich history that flourished during the Renaissance, when famous Genoese merchants traded throughout Italy and beyond. It is a port city, but its access to the sea not only opened up the opportunity for it to successfully trade throughout the Mediterranean, but also created the prerequisites for an urban development problem, the consequences of which Italians are now experiencing. As the head of the ‘URBANLAB’ project, Anna Korsi, noted, until recently the city and the port developed separately from each other, as a result of which the access to the sea and excellent panoramas were virtually cut off from the townspeople. Back in the 19th century, Genoa was famous for its wide green boulevards that went down straight to the coast, but today there is nothing like that, the overgrown port occupied the entire coastal part.
Only in recent years, the government has gone to reconsider the urban planning scheme, go outside the city and look at it from the outside, strategically link its plan with the surrounding area. In this he is assisted by ‘URBANLAB’ and the famous architects he has attracted, Richard Rogers, Amanda Burden, Oriol Bohigas and others.
‘URBANLAB’ has built the new urban concept not on the traditional idea of functional zoning, but on a diagram that takes into account the so-called “networks” and “nodes”. This refers to various communication flows and their intersection points, which often turn into problem areas. It is important for ‘URBANLAB’ that Genoa renews itself within its existing borders and does not creep past the so-called “green line”, reminiscent of the Green belt in London. Only here the line is more broken due to the mountainous landscape of the Genoese region. Building on what has already been built is the ‘URBANLAB’ basic rule. Another border of the city's growth - the "blue line", is located on the side of the sea and coincides with the ancient Roman road. Now there are two ports - the old Porto Antico, reconstructed by Renzo Piano, and the new one, both of which cut the sea from the city. Meanwhile, for both residents and tourists, such beauty is wasted. The reunification of the city and the port, as Anna Corsi emphasized, is one of the first places in the plans of ‘URBANLAB’.
The entire urban planning venture includes several large-scale projects, such as the airport on the artificial island of Renzo Piano, reminiscent of the project made by Piano for Kansai Airport in Osaka. Several dozen "small tasks" adjoin large projects - reconstruction of individual dilapidated houses, greening of roofs, and so on.
The format of the laboratory suggests that the main attention of its participants is focused on the observation and study of urban space and the mechanisms of its life in order to overcome the outdated functional zoning scheme in the new master plan, which does not take into account the fact that the city is not a closed phenomenon, but a sum numerous connections and streams. In particular, Anna Corsi stressed, it is impossible to solve urban planning problems without taking into account that every year the intensity of trade relations between Genoa and the rest of Italy is only growing - therefore, it is necessary to plan the overload of the transport network and foresee its change in advance.
Against the background of Moscow problems, urban planning in general and transport in particular, the Genoese ones may seem somehow very tiny. You never know, the sea is not visible … Wherever you look, there is little to be seen, mainly cars, fences, and concrete skeletons of new construction. Therefore, the ‘URBANLAB’ experience seems doubly useful for Moscow architects - it shows how attentively one can treat a small city with a rich history. Reconstruction, landscaping, preserving borders, accentuating knots … All this is true and very beautiful from the outside, but just in order to approach a big city with no less interesting history with the same yardstick, you should probably look at it "through a magnifying glass" - as many small ones. But the Italians did not give advice, but only shared their experience.
