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The “Landscape-Infrastructure”: a
multicriteria analytic approach for
a territorial model of sustainable
development. The new pan-
European infrastructure network into
the urban transformations of Verona.
Chiara Locardi 1 , Daniela Perrotti 2
1
Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Architettura e
Pianificazione, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133
Milano, Italy (e-mail: chiaralocardi@libero.it)
2
Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Architettura e
Pianificazione, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133
Milano, Italy / Ecole Nationale Supérieure d‘Architecture
de Paris-La Villette, Laboratoire “Architectures
Milieux Paysages”, 144 Avenue de Flandre, 75019
Paris, France (e-mail: daniela.perrotti@polimi.it)
Abstract
The research on the Verona urban landscape
transformations generated from the new pan-European
infrastructure network presents the opportunity to verify
the close and reciprocal relationship between two
different entities: “Infrastructure” and “Landscape”.
The peculiarity of the analytic and strategic
approach “Landscape-Infrastructure” lies in its
double contribution: on one side it works towards
the strategic and functional integration of the new
infrastructures in the metropolitan landscape of
Verona; on the other it brings out the potential of the
production landscape through the insertion of the new
regional and pan-European network in his territory.
It deals with a development project proposing the
image of the network as a connection device between
newly developed areas and the invariant systems
of historic architecture and natural landscape,
bringing out the core-identity of the territory in
its connections with the systems of geography,
transport, commerce, culture, and tourism.
The connection function is specifically assigned to
the open areas metropolitan network that is traced
by the morphological datum, the typological matrix
and the geographical structure, connecting them
reciprocally with the new High Speed Network poles.
This methodology considers the “Landscape” itself
as an “Infrastructure”, endowing the relation between
open and built space with structure and hierarchy,
and at the same time as an evolving “system”: a
space of the conflict between different actors.
“Landscape-Infrastructure” is a connection device
composed of three components (urban tissue,
infrastructure network and free ground) that are
contemporarily analysed and compared in order to
strengthen and hierarchise the metropolitan landscape
through its urban and geographical structure.
In this approach the edge express the physical space
of the morphological, geographic and connective
potentials for each development area and it also
represents the territory of exchange between
bordering micro-regions in the urban ecosystem.
This new analytic and conceptual device is
designed to adjust the reciprocal integration of
the two elements “Infrastructure” and “Landscape”
through the research of a common denominator,
allowing a comparative and synoptic view of its
different components as analytic criteria.
The multi-criteria, analytic approach “Landscape-
Infrastructure” is essentially a dialectical instrument
operating on these two oxymoronic elements in
order to overcome their usual contraposition and
the ancient dialectic of “nature versus culture”.
It deals with all the complex synergies of the urban
ecosystem and it represents a developmental
vector of economic, social and ecological
sustainability: an essential instrument for the
evolution of human habitat on the planet Earth.
Key words
“Landscape-Infrastructure” methodology, multi-criteria
analysis approach, edges design strategy, landscape
connective potential, sustainable territorial model
Introduction
The study Landscape-Infrastructure emerged as the result
of seeing the plans for the Alta Velocità [High Speed
Rail Link] as an opportunity to investigate the city and
surroundings of Verona and its metropolitan network.
From the point of view of the strategic development
of a city and the area around it, the expansion of the
motorways and railways together with the resulting
rationalisation programme and the development of the
relevant infrastructures and technology, are universally
seen as a suitable opportunity to provide a new plan for
the area. The research therefore considers the overall
strategy for the Verona area as such an opportunity:
specifically, it aims to strengthen the urban “fabric”,
to establish both the location of new peripheral zones
and the extent of expansion, and to repair physical and
functional fragmentation in the area.
It deals with a development plan which, in light of the
fact that the area is a natural hub not only for the transport
system but also for the environmental, commercial,
administrative, cultural and tourist sectors, envisages
the “network” as a means of connecting development
areas and clusters of historical-architectural and