by Chiara Nifosì (Assistant Professor in urban design, DAStU-Politecnico di Milano)
& Francesca Pintus (Associate Director – Sr. Urban Designer, One Works)
Since the 1970s, the development of maritime transport has prompted many European cities to progressively decentralise their harbours towards extra-urban areas, rejuvenating historic central ports in the process. Conversely, Italy’s historic ports have expanded within urban areas, often leading to conflicts and infrastructure paralysis, complicating integration with city life.
This paper will discuss insights and preliminary findings from the ongoing drafting of a new Port Regulatory Masterplan for the Sistema del Ponente Ligure, encompassing Genova, Savona, and Vado Ligure in northern Italy. Following a recent national regulatory reform on ports, this Masterplan represents Italy’s first integrated port system development. The new legislation emphasises the importance of ‘axes and spaces for port-city connection,’ highlighting opportunities for collaborative planning between Port System Authorities, Municipalities, any other relevant authorities, planners, and citizens. The Ponente Ligure Masterplan aims to translate these guidelines into effective spatial strategies.
This three-port system faces challenges due to its confined location between the sea and mountains, marked by discontinuous, inaccessible, and 'grey' industrial boundaries, including highways, railways, parking lots, logistic zones, gates, and checkpoints. Balancing port operations, public access, and everyday urban life, poses serious challenges.
Starting from the identified ‘port-city connection’ elements, the new Masterplan aims to redefine port boundaries through a series of multi-scale and inclusive strategies. These include an integrated and accessible soft mobility network, enhancing public spaces, and the integration of repurposed heritage buildings for public use.
About the Speakers:
Francesca Pintus
Francesca is an architect and urban designer with a focus on sustainable design for places and cities. Over her 10+ years of experience, she has been exposed to working on local and international urban design projects at different scales, feeding her interest into the most diverse cultures, needs and objectives. Francesca is passionate about harmoniously solving the complexity of mixed-use developments while delivering high quality public realm, with the aim to provide an optimal setting for healthy communities to thrive. The masterplans she has been involved with include residential, healthcare, higher education, commercial, sport and entertainment uses. Francesca approaches each project with a dual lens, smoothly moving from the macro to the micro scale and vice versa. Her intent is to generate flexible yet coherent urban design frameworks that allow the construction of optimal buildings, making the latter proactively respond and positively contribute to their context. Given her passion for sustainable approaches, Francesca is qualified LEED AP for Neighbourhood Development (ND), and BREEAM Communities Assessor.
Chiara Nifosì
I’m a PhD architect and currently a researcher (fixed term) in Urban Design at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Politecnico di Milano. My profile is characterized by a continuous and intense research by design activity adopting a multi-scalar and multi-disciplinary approach. Since 2002 I’ve been teaching and researching in the field of urban design and planning. Since 1998 I have also worked as a freelancer and as a consultant for several professional architectural firms for which I’ve led a lot of plans and projects in collaboration with public or private stakeholders and citizens. My overall design and professional research have explored the following topics: large infrastructure and territory, public space and landscape, urban regeneration. In recent years, the field of research has focused on the design of public space and infrastructures as a key elements for the territorial socio-ecological transition, with particular reference to the coastline and to the dialogue with the public-private stakeholders and citizens. Ongoing research on these topics are: Costal roads. An Atlas for the socio-ecological transition of fragile coastal territories (DAStU with Transform Transport, 2022-ongoing); The Port as a shared space. Western Ligurian-Sea Ports system waterfront regeneration (AdSP, One Works with DAStU/PoliMI, 2023-ongoing). Recent publications on coastal and rural territories include my books, Verso i piani di rigenerazione (2023), Ecologie rurali (2023) and Territori in divenire (2021), published by Lettera Ventidue.