Improving Liveability in Decaying Residential Neighbourhoods. Regeneration by Initiatives on Open Spaces

The key to sustainable urban regeneration is to make Europeís cities attractive and safe places to live. With this respect, long-term investments and planning are required in decaying urban areas. The European Union and single European countries have shown a growing interest in neighbourhood regeneration as actually proved by the funds allocated to promote integrated strategies. To enhance liveability in post-war deteriorated neighbourhoods, combined approaches directed to both buildings and open spaces appear to be important like also suggested within the debate on the failures of Modern design principles. Many of those urban areas, in fact, present similarities in decay problems. This is true also for Italian late post-war suburbs. In this context: what initiatives on social and environmental level may lead to improved liveability in European good practices? What funding appear relevant to feasible strategies? We try to address the mentioned questions within a broader research program at the IUAV University of Venice financed by the Italian Government. The purpose of this research is to identify elements leading to good practice in neighbourhood regeneration and experiment them in real contexts in Italy in order to identity key elements for success on European level. After an introduction to the research background and the Italian situation, we here provide an overview on some significant examples of regeneration in Europe dealing with housing estates and public spaces. Based on qualitative approach we draw some preliminary conclusions and identify directions for further investigations.