Archaeology and nature: hyblean cultural landscape and territorial ...

Road Infrastructures: methodological approach for the research of
value added.
Michele CULATTI
Phd at Department of Structure Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Trento, Italy
michele_culatti@fastwebnet.it
Abstract
Even though the treatment of road infrastructures (bridges and roads) assumes the subject of quality as a
goal, it is rarely developed in a propositive way. Among numerous forms of quality, there should exist a
technical performance quality level which infrastructural promoters and supporters aim for, there is also a
perceived quality which is hard to detect because of, in some instances, its intangible value. When
comparing road infrastructures that are typologically homogeneous, one realises that during the planning,
the dominance of the technical performance quality leads one to think about a value subtracted from the
territory, determining an overshadowing of the perceived quality. Nevertheless, when observing the best
planning results, it turns out that the perceived quality can assume different forms amongst which is
“conceptual quality”. Should this latter one be defined as a whole of value added deduced from the
connection of components within the plan and the territorial context, it enables the project to satisfy a series
of requirements not directly requested by the performance goal but essential for the function of the
infrastructure. A methodological approach can take place in order to define this value added approach which
provides the appraisal of already existing road infrastructures according to its fruition, thus the form-function
perception and its meaning (or importance or significance). All of the subjects arising from the perceptive
reading of the projects, can provide a sort of checklist which is useful to support the improvement phases of
new infrastructural plans, determining the composition of value added and place renovation.
Key words: infrastructure quality, value added.
1. Quality forms of infrastructures
In times of restricted financial resources and in vulnerable territories which arise because of objections to a
planning proposal, the growing quality required of linear road infrastructures (urban and extra-urban roads)
and all types of bridges and their relationship with the immediate environment, focuses the attention on the
evolution of the meaning of road infrastructure quality. There has been an evolution in the road infrastructural
plan, from a quality addressed only to the plan which has as technical-performance goals, to a quality
relating to the environment where qualitative criteria refer to the environmental protection, specifically
environmental impacts and more recently or landscape ones. Yet, what is lacking is a quality external to the
plan, concerning its relationship to an urban and territorial context used by the community. This is due to
many factors: on the one hand a cultural “emptiness” which has its roots in the history of Italian
infrastructures during the post second world war period. On the other hand, a normative “emptiness” which
will be analysed later. In addition, the determination, measurement, and evaluation of the road infrastructure
quality during its many phases, such as planning, getting into operation, maintenance, and their relationship
with the environment , can be detected through complex quality-quantitative indicators. Then again, the
quality of the work which complies with the function in the context and its interaction with the fruition, is too
often without a far-reaching concept that leads to the discussion about the meaning for the community of
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