Adaptive Urbanism: Ten Points for a Manifesto

The research is about the concept of adaptation, which is not explored from a naturalistic perspective: as in the Nature-Based Solutions approach, but in policies and practices just because there are changes in technological, economic and social aspect in the contemporay life. A long transition that requires a new public action with a different planning system. As the title of this Congress: planning in transition. The Italian planning system combines a relatively stable structure characterized by the traditional “urbanistic” typological approach, which is based on the centrality of the master plan at the municipal level, and a non-concluded process of modernization that has become more intensive in the last 20years, during which the planning discipline has explored new technical instruments and experimented new forms of territorial-governance practices. Three main aspects of the Italian planning system can be considered structural features: 1) a still strong predominance of the local level, despite the growing of supralocal planning capacities; 2) the architectural root of the discipline, supporting a combination of urban design strategies, land use prescriptions and territorial governance in a complex legislative framework; 3) the persistence of conformative prescriptions in spite of a mainly absent programming capacity. In general the use of the strength of the juridical status (of landownership, of zoning prescription, etc.) and the debate on the legal legitimacy of the policy choices are typical of a context where the politics has an unstable authority and a historical weakness in implementing its decisions.