
It addresses the questions of what vitality means for local people and how they experience vitality in their everyday lives. This paper reports on ongoing research that explores the concept of vitality in the case of non-central residential areas. There is a lack of understanding of how residents experience street vitality or how vitality can be integrated into urban design interventions at the local level. Most research on urban vitality has focused on city centres with less attention has been paid to non-central residential areas. Active streets help promote sustainable and healthy behaviours such as walkability. The provision of mixed uses and concentration of diverse people and activities are perceived as necessary conditions for vitality at the street level. In this context, in recent years several addressing measures used both on a continental and national scale, which led to the development of a body of law, articulated on local level in a very widespread way, causing a drastic review of the standard procedures of planning/design and construction practices of the building/facility system as a whole.Īctive and lively streets are indicators of successful communities. Certainly, the increased cost of energy from renewable sources contributed to it and the resulting impoverishment of the end users who must bear the burden, the development of technologies for better and more integrated systems for energy production in the technical elements of buildings, the improvement of performance in energy terms of materials and building product components. This phenomenon has been more or less physiological and spontaneous differing from the regional and productive contexts from which it developed, but the phenomena that have supported and promoted it are usually the same at the continental level. In recent years have we have witnessed a consolidation, a very slow and gradual evolution of design culture which is energetically conscious thanks to certain particularly stringent and effective drivers. The looking glass of a two-year transnational exchange project, bringing together universities and local administrations, allows us to understand the great challenge lying ahead in the 21st century: the quest to create cities which are beautiful, healthy, and attractive places to live.

Edited Carola Clemente e Federico De Matteis It is a multi-disciplinary reflection on urban development, encompassing strategies, governance models, guidance instruments and assessment tools, all considered in the wider framework of current European policies on the city, housing and building technology. Urbact II Working Group “Hopus – Housing Praxis for Urban Sustainability”. Per maggiori informazioni sul progetto: Housing for Europe Strategies for Quality in Urban Space, Excellence in Design, Performance in Building. Il volume è stato realizzato nell’abito di URBACT II Operational Programme 2007-2013 Working Group HOPUS Housing Praxis for Urban Sostanaibility. Nel volume, in lingua inglese ed interamente a colori, una raccolta di soluzioni progettuali suddivise per Paese di provenienza.

Il volume rappresenta il momento di sintesi di progetto di cambio transnazionale durato due anni, sviluppato con la collaborazione di università ed amministrazioni locali, che permette di mettere a fuoco la sfida che dovremo portare avanti nel 21 secolo: lavorare per creare città che siano belle, salubri, ed attraenti luoghi da vivere. "A cura di Carola Clemente e Federico De Matteis Una riflessione multi-disciplinare sullo sviluppo urbano, che indaga: - strategie - modelli di governo - strumenti di guida e valutazione del progetto nel quadro delle politiche europee sulla città, sul controllo della qualità della vita e della qualità del costruire, sano e sostenibile.
