An integrated approach for multi-scale urban planning

Abstract

In the international debate about urban planning the word "in-between city" often refers to ideas of widespread city, city-region or intermediate city, and generally to the dissolution of traditional compact city. A new dispersed and fragmented city-territory is taking shape, comprehending many open spaces, some of which abandoned and degraded.
The recent environmental feeling together with a new culture of sustainability, over the last two decades, led to new urban planning concepts and practices putting green areas and natural spaces at the center of planning interest. Green infrastructure represents a tool able to regenerate fragmented open spaces present into contemporary city-territory. The paper proposes a methodology integrating the regional vision present into the ideas of green infrastructure network and punctual regeneration of sensitive areas of the city, using efficiently the urban acupuncture approach. The proposed methodology has been applied to a medium-sized Romanian coastal city, Mangalia, near the Black Sea: a notable historic city which has been erased by the transformations of the socialist dictatorship. Nowadays the city is threatened by a poor quality residential expansion. The design solution provided an initial verification of the feasibility of the proposed method.