Research by design; Urbanism; Soil; Ecosystem services; Pedology; renewable resource; City-Territory; Land-use
VialleAntoine (2022), Downscaling Urbanism to the Fine Grain of Urban Soils: Another Look at the Urban Footprint, in
OASE, 110(ISBN: 978-), X.
Viganò Paola, Barcelloni Corte Martina, Vialle Antoine (2020), Le sol de la ville-territoireProjet et production de connaissances, in
Revue d'anthropologie des connaissances, 14(4), 1-27.
Vialle Antoine, Giampieri Mario (2020), Mapping Urbanization as an Anthropedogenetic Process: A Section through the Times of Urban Soils, in
Urban Planning, 5(2), 262-279.
Vialle Antoine (2018), BUILDING HORIZONTALITY? The Impact of Road Design Regulations on Urban Ecosystems, in Cavalieri Chiara, Barcelloni Corte Martina, Viganò Paola (ed.), Springer International Publishing, Cham, 361-367.
VialleAntoine, VerrecchiaEric (2018), Du sol comme œuvre, au sol comme archive de l'action humaine : Microhistoire d'un principe d'espérance à travers deux textes du pédologue Dan H. Yaalon, in Viganò Paola, Mantziaras Panos (ed.), Metis Presses, Genève, 7-21.
Faced with the constant growth of human settlements and increasingly threatening environmental challenges, the Swiss government has recently highlighted, through research initiatives such as the National Research Program 68, the urgency to consider soils as a resource providing a “wide range of ecosystem services” to both human and non-human habitats. In this perspective, the relation between the soil and the city needs to be rethought. Today extended urban formations characterized by a strong co-penetration of urban and rural realms characterize increasingly vast swathes of land all around the world and find in Switzerland a specific configuration. In such a new urban context the renewed ratio established between built and open space opens up a wide range of questions where the role of soil is increasingly crucial and strategic.In this frame, this research project aims at re-conceptualizing the existing relation between urban territories and soil while revising the paradigm according to which the city merely represents a threat for the natural environment. The project’s hypothesis explores the City-Territory as a renewable resource able to work with and not against ecological systems. Even if still poorly taken into consideration, urbanized soils, that in some cases have proven to have higher eco-systemic values than even those of intensive agricultural areas, can in fact play a significant role in the management of urban ecosystems.The proposed approach combines the concepts of “soil” and and “land use” in an interdisciplinary way, using inputs from different (and traditionally distinct) fields to build an original theoretical and epistemological framework. Three closely interdependent research operations: (1) a new description/classification, (2) the articulation of a complex territorial Atlas, and (3) a set of Eco-Spatial Design Strategies, are envisaged to build a more holistic approach to planning.There is an urgent need to build an experimental body of research enabling both the consideration of soils as a fundamental player in the project of contemporary city-territory and conversely, urbanism as a fundamental tool for soil management.The research proposal has the ambition to connect the current research on urban soil, mainly produced by environmental scientists, to the most advanced research on the new form of the contemporary city, that has recently led the way in urbanism, planning and landscape urbanism. By connecting up these two different “gazes” to the question of urban soils, the research wishes to explore the soil of the City-Territory as an occasion to innovate the urban and territorial project.