To Plan, Design and Evaluate “Urban Mending”

Pope Francis’s encyclical provides researchers concerned with the problem of the urban periphery with three suggestions. The first is to renounce any specialized approach that is based on an acritical confidence in the power of science and technology to solve the complex problems of today’s world, particularly those that concern the environment and the poor. The second is to adopt an approach based on a “culture of care” for nature and for the most vulnerable people, and third approach is to include people (especially those who are weakest) in transparent decision-making processes that affect the quality of their lives. Starting from these suggestions, and from Renzo Piano’s statement that, at present and in the future, “the mission of architecture is to save the outskirts” through “a huge work of mending”, we believe that researchers should, with humility, make use of the ‘urban-mending’ approach when dealing with the complexity of regeneration projects. At the levels of both the architectural project and urban planning, they should adopt an integrated, interdisciplinary approach that is lighter and more sensitive than those used in the past. This will help them to face up to the multidimensionality and complexity of redeveloping peripheral areas. All stakeholders, especially the weakest people in society, should be empowered and involved in public decision making and planning implementation. Finally, genuine participation of the marginalized, excluded and disaffected inhabitants of peripheral areas (i.e. the outcasts) can be achieved using a “deliberative-democratic” approach.