Le residenze universitarie come strumento di rigenerazione urbana. L'esperienza del programma 338/2000

The deep crisis of living finds in the university residences a multidisciplinary field of design experimentation, as well as typological and technological research, that stimulates the investigation of issues such as the identity and the cohesion of social housing and the research for shared life forms and new paradigms for contemporary living. The university residences are a real form of elective neighborhood where private spaces and collective services coexist in a balance of spaces and relationships that ensure users, according to the principles of economic and environmental sustainability, maximum privacy in the residential area and, at the same time, the possibility to share rooms and common spaces (study rooms, kitchens, canteens, gyms, recreational spaces, green spaces, bike sharing services, etc.). Besides being examples of low cost and high performance, the university residences are an interesting reference also for other forms of collective living, for their potentialities in the development of the relation between individual and community, through a link between private and collective spaces. The university residences can determine new lifestyles and values of identity that, especially in Italy, end in an opening towards the city, with positive effects in terms of regeneration, integration and revitalization quality of living. The activity of investigation and monitoring of more than 300 projects of redevelopment and new construction that, in accordance with Law 338/00, have been awarded the state co-financing for building and retrofitting of residences for university students, has shown that the implementation of a beware policy of territorial government guarantees a real and immediate impact on the urban scale, so as to configure the university residences as indicators measuring economic and social value of a community. The research carried out for the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research allowed to verify programs and political strategies, methodologies and design tools, and not in the last case, the ways of execution and management of public and private entities. In conclusion, from the large collection of case studies and best practices, the paper will present one project, located in Venice, that contributed to regenerate rundown neighborhood and abandoned structure through urban and social procedures of mending, by recovering and increasing important buildings.