“Requisiti e metodi per la progettazione ambientale degli spazi urbani”

The paper takes way from the outline of the state of the art on mobility issues and possibilities of reorganization from the point of view of quality of life improvement and environmental sustainability. The experiences already made in many other countries, both European and extra European, take to say that such reorganization has to be based on some main basic choices: to improve public transport and intermodality offer, to boost its use for the longer routes, and to promote non motorized transport modes for the short displacements, to discourage private individual traffic. To this aim it is necessary to affect the structure of the mobility system: components and speed, weights and hierarchies. The essay gives then an overview of various possible actions that can be taken to increase the share of the pedestrian mode in town and to regain space for hosting all the activities of displacement and stasis, with the aim to create a continuous pedestrian network, interlaced with a calmed vehicular mobility. The focus is on an Italian tool that could allow to do this, but that is not very much used yet: the Environmental Island, inserted in the indications given by the law on Urban Traffic Plans. Such instrument is up to date in respect with other European tools, as the English Home Zones, the French or German Zone 30 etc. Its potentialities are in particular analysed for the upgrading of residential districts, above all for meeting the main pedestrians’ requirements: safety and security, accessibility, comfort, use and aspect of the urban spaces. The essay suggests also a methodology, already applied in pilot projects elaborated for case studies in Rome, for integrating the two main aspects of the design: reorganization of the mobility and improvement of the urban quality on its whole. Finally it deals with three main issues: the behaviour and speed appropriate to the urban environment and the auto explicatory street as a measure of traffic calming; the design of a coexistence space; the environmental design of the intermediate spaces.