Assuming that the infrastructure is an essential condition of the typical American city, as one of the former
leading hubs shrinks to a pre-urban state, what is the future
of the hundred miles of built roads, highways, ramps and
parking lots? How can planning strategize on the de-growth
of what used to be the American dream city?
The project aims at maintaining the main structure of the
city of Detroit and rearrange unpredictable scenarios around
it. The analysis uncovers hidden potentials in the existing
infrastructure, able to host innovative uses through lean regeneration
strategies, by re purposing the service spaces, the
left-overs, the scraps that the engineering work necessarily
demands.
The project’s ambition
is to show the natural evolution of a system creating urbanity
trough pure connection, a system which carefully avoids
congestion but which gives an open support to unpredictable
spaces. If the actual demographic decline keeps going,
the next Detroit will be a smaller, but not less broad, city,
with a new relation with nature, no more opposed to its
network but mingled with it. A Perimeter of Urbanity
will garrison a wild territory and the infrastructure will turn
into the object of the city itself instead of a mere service.
Research-by-design, 2010.
In collaboration with Federico Luzzi and Roberta Pari.
MArch final thesis, University of Ferrara
In collaboration with Federico Luzzi and Roberta Pari.
MArch final thesis, University of Ferrara



