The Mending Termini Station method: the strategic planning of the city.

The crisis of contemporary city, generated by unsustainable development models, with consequent phenomena of urban sprawl, has led to a succession of suburbs with very low relational intensity, distorting the perception of cities. The infrastructure represents the skeleton of this interconnected network, playing a fundamental strategic role in directing urban evolution. The purpose of this article is to provide an adaptable, multidisciplinary and all-inclusive method, which considers intervention in the infrastructure system and nodes as a strategic priority, in order to ensure a level of quality and planning that allows the concatenation of subsequent interventions. The significant steps of this approach are associated to the Mending Termini Station project, presented in the last edition of the Congress, in an article by arch. Mario Cerasoli and arch. Chiara Amato. The development of a method is aimed at implementing the actions necessary to complete a strategic plan for a radical transformation of the city. In the case of Roma Termini, the long-term objective is to reverse the trend of mobility patterns and enhance the area inside the Aurelian Walls (UNESCO heritage). The current state of infrastructure systems offers possibilities able to bring together the interests of various actors. By establishing the intervention on the infrastructure as the first step, necessary to rebalance urban systems, it is possible to foresee direct effects on the nodes and on the city, that open the way to further transformations. Among these, the recovery of urban land is a fundamental step of the method, achievable through the undergrounding of infrastructure parts. The feasibility of such important projects is often linked to the liberalisation of rail transport, which has given the ownership of the areas to government-controlled private companies, making them promoters and guarantors of transformations, through agreements with public authorities. Through the transformation of the infrastructural system, it is possible to carry out interventions on mobility, on the environmental system and on urban requalification, able to establish specific lines of development for the city. These actions can be planned over time, in order to make urban transformation sustainable and less radical, and must act as catalysts to achieve the strategic objectives. To provide guidelines for future projects, Mending Termini Station concludes with the planning of a new urban polarity on the railway area, a proposal that defines limits and requirements relating to services, functions, landscape and formal relationship with the context.