Bologna, buildings in via Santa Caterina before the restoration.

Bologna, buildings in via Santa Caterina after the restoration. Facades have only been one part of the integral block preservation.

Revitalization of Historic Town Centers

Bologna, Plan for the Preservation of the Historic Center, Pierluigi Cervellati and others, since 1969
Pre-war extension of Bologna had followed the historical structure of the city with its squares, streets, dwellings and public buildings, but the combination of capitalist enterprise and public housing development changed this strategy after the war. Dwellings were erected outside the city center following new models, and the center was left to a combination of decay and speculative redevelopment. The movement of the poor to the periphery encouraged social divisions as speculative development disrupted the urban core. The historic center began an apparently irreversible process of decline. In the 1960s, when the boom began to slow and urgent infrastructure problems like sewage, lighting, and highways had been solved, planners started thinking about "a new urban strategy according to the social perspectives of the political programs" (Pierluigi Cervellati in 1962). The result was an urban program for the "preservation" of the historic center. The authors considered existing town centers "as elements of polycentric systems" in order to reduce the pressure of the service sector arising from the development of office space in the historic center. The task was to restore the present buildings in the historic center and then assign them to the people that had always lived there, rather than moving them to separate, distant working-class districts. Preserving the historic center thus concerned the social structure as well as the buildings, considering the "structure" of the whole pre-existent. Urban form was defined as an organism (of buildings, people, milieu, etc.) to be preserved materially and socially. The extension of the concept of "artistic patrimony" to "existing buildings patrimony," and the connection of "restoration" to both monuments and town planning, changed the approach to the residential buildings of the historic center. The economic aspect became more relevant than pure consistency of structure and material, designers paid as much attention to the typology and the environment. From these reflections derived the project for Bologna, an attempt to create an "integral restoration". Conceived in a board of political and social management of the city, the plan sought to free the development of the city from speculative mechanisms. The concept of architecture itself, which formerly intended urban expansion and research of new formal solutions in favor of the enjoyment of a minority of intellectuals, was completely modified. An architecture of real social functions, in contrast to a traditional functionalism, was deployed to stop an urban expansion caused by capitalistic mechanisms. This plan marked an end to the illusion of the avant-garde deeply connected to the growth of industrial production. Leonardo Benevolo strongly influenced town planning in Bologna. In 1961 he received the assignment for a first version of the "Piano per la conservazione del Centro storico". The final version was drawn by his assistant and town planning councilor Pierluigi Cervellati and was officially presented and adopted by the town council on 21.7.1969. The proposed model made a clear distinction between center and outskirts, and suggested the preservation of the traditional typology as well as the present inhabitants. The plan proposed an intervention in the general physical structure of the historic center and thus considered monuments and dwellings to be of equal importance. The plan considered the dwellings (houses and collective equipment), public buildings and places to be a social service determined by the needs of the people. The historic center thus became a living place for the normal middle-class, where architecture and town planning reconstructed their personal needs as well as respecting the needs of economic production. Revitalization of historical centers has not been a solely Italian problem. Issues across Europe ranged from conservation of existing buildings to the restructuring of destroyed contexts. The classicist restoration of a traditional city image can be seen in the reconstruction of city blocks in Brussels after the ideas of Maurice Culot since the publishing of "The Brussels Declaration" in 1978. An urban renaissance has been aided by the restructuring projects for Barcelona since 1980: public places and promenades have become architectural fantasies. The restructuration of Dublin's Temple Bar district since 1991 did not exclude modernist architectural language. But it was the Bologna experiment that set the standard by combining the preservation of historic buildings with an adequate social policy. Valerio Giancaspro
Bologna, restoration plan of the Solferino block, second floor, 1977. The project respected the typology of the existing town houses.

Bologna. The arcades as the secondary road system give to the city its special character and have therefore been preserved by the restoration plan completely.

Bologna, main building types of town houses. In order to develop an adequate preservation strategy, the typology of the city had been studied carefully.

Bologna, plan of the San Leonardo block, first floor, existing conditions, 1978.

Bologna, restoration project of the Solferino block, 1977. The project not only saved the street facades but also the entire buildings; inhabitants could remain on the spot.

Bologna, plan of the San Leonardo block, first floor, restoration project, 1978. The existing typology has been respected and additions have been made in analogy.