Macrosessione 4. Resilienza e/o Capacità Adattiva

Macrosession 4. Resilience and/or Adaptiveness.

Committee: Donatella Calabi (Università IUAV, Venezia), Andrea Longhi (Politecnico di Torino – DIST), Gabor Sonkoly (Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest, Hungary), Elena Svalduz (Università di Padova) Angioletta Voghera (Politecnico di Torino – DIST).

Reporting: Andrea Longhi (Politecnico di Torino – DIST)

Adaptivity is the ability to change and adapt to changing circumstances. It can stimulate the resilience of particular cities and urban systems, but resilience can also be achieved by not adapting to change and by returning to ‘business as usual’, once the change or shock is absorbed. The aim of this macrosession is to deal with the polysemous nature of the two paths. In spatial terms, the urban and regional scale of the phenomena of resilience and/or adaptability will be considered; in temporal terms, the resilience processes will be investigated on a broad chronological spectrum. The concrete historical declinations of processes will provide a wealth of experience on which further comparative research can be based. We call for research that, in different disciplinary fields, highlights above all the relationship between the capacity of a community to respond to traumatic stresses (political, climatic, health), and the possibility of structures and forms (urban, territorial, infrastructural, museal) to absorb, withstand or foresee changes in response to such stresses, both in terms of resilience and adaptation.

More specifically the macrosession will include (but it will be limited to):

After the crises: urban systems and buildings as drivers of change in land uses.

In a comparative perspective we are going to analyze the different processes of adaptation and reaction activated by urban governments after crises such as pandemics and wars. Particular attention will be paid to urban reorganization and special districts or buildings during the Early Modern period.

Urban history and political regimes

Approaches based on resilience and adaptiveness offer new models of temporality for urban history. This new temporality is characterized by cyclical development determined by impact/response and by the succession of integrating regimes, in which a new regime is not necessarily the denial of the previous, but its adaptive modification. The overall question is how urban history can profit from these approaches.

Territorial resilience from an environmental historical perspective.

Scholars are invited to present research that investigates the resilient responses of urban and rural communities highlighting their relationships between environmental pressures (e.g. climatic variations, catastrophic events, exploitation of natural resources) and transformations of social organizations.

Trasformative resilience of cities and territories.

Renewed interactions between human-nature, to build a recreational and economic alliance of the natural and cultural system, and of the landscape. To overcome social, environmental, climate, and economic vulnerabilities, new interactions need to be developed through a diverse food production, and for the enhancement of ecosystem services via "educational" alliance. Policies for ecological functionality of territories, for the enhancement of the landscape, and for the construction of an alliance among natural, rural and urban territories are strategic. Urban areas in IUCN Protected are a key “engine” and promoters of innovative practices, such as co-management and co-design, integrating policies and developing collaborative actions.