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Industrial Areas. A Survey, Analysis and Appraisal of the Potential for Conversion of Disused Industrial Areas in Ticino

2009; Volume: 4; Issue: 11 Linguagem: Inglês

2065-3913

Enrico Sassi, Francesco Vismara, Nicoletta Ossanna Cavadini, Josep Acebillo,

Urbanization and City Planning

1. Introduction Canton Ticino, or Ticino, is the southernmost canton of Switzerland. The written language is Italian in almost the entire canton. Together with areas of the canton of Graubunden it makes up the so-called Svizzera Italiana (Italian Switzerland). The canton of Ticino is almost entirely surrounded by Italy which lies to its east, west and south. To the north lie the cantons of Valais and Uri, to the northeast the canton of Graubunden. Its area is 2,812 square kilometers (1,086 sq mi), of which about three quarters are considered productive. The Canton of Ticino is divided into 8 districts (Figure 1): Figure 1--Canton Of Ticino 1. Mendrisio District 2. Lugano District 3. Locarno District 4. Vallemaggia District 5. Bellinzona District 6. Riviera District 7. Blenio District 8. Leventina District Modern society is notable for far-reaching changes directly attributable to the processes of globalisation and the re-location of manufacturing concurrent with the increasing strategic importance of the advanced tertiary sector. The scope for converting disused industrial land and buildings is, in this context, extremely significant (1). The importance of these ongoing changes was highlighted in the Rapporto sullo sviluppo drawn up in 2005 by DATEC, Switzerland's federal government department for the environment, transport, energy, and communications. The report--which makes a major contribution to analysing land development and to pointing to its future--provides in its introduction a clear picture of the far-reaching and rapid changes with which modern Switzerland must content. With a view to meeting these challenges emphasis is placed on the need to develop new horizons and, at the same time, attention is drawn to the absence of a unifying vision. The report brings to light the current trends in land development, which may be summarised as follows: 1) many areas have gradually lost their rural character without, however, acquiring an urban quality; 2) the growing importance of mobility and its direct implication as regards the wide-spread model of urbanisation; 3) the functional segregation in land use whereby, increasingly, it is the norm to work in the city and live in the country; 4) the lack of solidarity in urban agglomerations, where centres shoulder the costs of services used by everyone while small municipalities have little say in decisions; 5) the growing value of rural areas as a place for recreation, tourism, and ecological relief; 6) the growing demand for land and an outlook that offers no prospect of a slowdown in this respect; 7) the importance of disused industrial land as a resource in transforming and developing already urbanised areas. Switzerland's Federal Council had already pointed in the same direction in its report Politica degli agglomerati della Confederazione (Federal Council 2001). In it a clear statement is made of the aims of federal strategy: to contribute to the sustainable growth of urban space; to take a hand in maintaining the economic appeal of urban areas and a high quality of life for urban dwellers; to maintain a multi-centre network of towns and agglomerations; to limit the expansion of urban areas, structure them, and encourage building development that gravitated inward about the inner city. It is precisely with a view to this latter objective that industrial land and buildings are particularly significant. In promoting inner- city residential development an essential step is to examine the scope for intensified use of the existing urban structure, focusing especially on the conversion of disused industrial land and buildings. The federal government's land development agency (Ufficio federale dello sviluppo territoriale, also referred to herein as ARE) in its 2004 report La Suisse et ses friches industrielles--Des opportunites de developpement au coeur des agglomerations (ARE 2004) estimates that the amount of disused industrial land in Switzerland (Figure 2). …