interdisciplinary approaches and methods

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abstract_interdisciplinary approaches and methodologies to planning: the case of modena, italy

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emanuele bompan, gaspare caliri, marco lampugnani, beatrice manzoni, michele restuccia

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Existent literature shows that cities’ councils recently recognize that sustainable city’s problems transcended conventional disciplinary boundaries, presenting a new and distinctive type of research problematic (Haughton and Hunter, 1994) which can be successfully addressed through an interdisciplinary approach (Evans and Marvin, 2006).

Various municipalities (see Evans and Marvin (2006) for UK councils’ projects) ask for interdisciplinary approaches to city planning. Doing inter-disciplinarily disturbed the conventional relationships between researchers, users and funders, breaking out of traditional disciplinary boundaries and developing integrated approaches to complex problems.

The aim of this paper is to reflect on how interdisciplinary groups and approaches facilitate a governance process instead of a government one (Tanese et al., 2006) and bottom up/network based strategies instead of top down ones (Nieh, 2005). We are interested both in the results of the urban design transformations deriving from the multidisciplinary approach and in the on going planning process.

The case study analyzed in this paper presents, both in the municipality’s preliminary competition guidelines and in the groupwork methodology, the need for a triangulation between theories and methods different disciplines (architecture, urban design, geography, semiotics, economics and management) bring to the problem. The competition aimed at renovating the image of the district Porta Saragozza/Porta San Francesco in Modena which is a middle city in the north-centre of Italy, through urban design and marketing actions. Porta Saragozza and Porta San Francesco quarter mainly suffers a lack of coordination among available resources and local stakeholders. A network and a ready-to-use tool kit of social, communicative and economic tools to investigate identity, economy and space are needed.

We adopted a methodology involving semi structured face to face interviews to local public and private actors, residents, etc., urban structure analysis (mobility issues, etc.) and psycho geographical analysis, which are all methodologies pertaining to different branches.

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scritto per la conferenza ‘Art, Culture and Pubblic Sphere’, 2008

Posted on Sunday, January 10th, 2010 at 12:02 AM. Filed under: + research Tags: chairsharing, collaborazione, comunità, interdisciplinare, metodo, modena, pianificazione, snark, spazio pubblico RSS 2.0 feed.