Multidisciplinary approach for a new vision of urban requalification. Multi-scale strategies of social innovation, economic improvement and environmental sustainability practices.

For us Design for Next means linking people to places in a straight connection to the complexity of urban condition. Improving the quality of urban places means to work on the relationship between: people, places, traditions and cultural identity. The relationships involve also the link between building; environment and landscape system. A multidisciplinary approach is necessary to understand the complexity of urban phenomena meeting social, economic and environmental needs. It is very important boosting virtuous mechanisms for urban regeneration spreading innovation, guiding and shaping spontaneous social-change initiatives, starting from local traditions. Our research team composed by planners, architects and designers has drawn up a methodology in order to apply it in a small rural village requalification project in China. The town, named XibinZhen (Fujian Region) is undergoing in an economic and social contraction process, which is bringing it to an incessant depopulation. We recognize landscape aspects, in our case the Youxi River, like a key resource to improve the urban area and the identity related with the context. We also have identified a heritage path, which connects the two waterfronts and defines a cultural itinerary to understand and develop lifestyles, traditions and local production. The methodology is composed in this way: 1) research and analyses in order to know places and ongoing multiscale phenomena; 2) collection of international best practices and references applicable in a specific case study; 3) brainstorming in which different disciplinary figures, local stakeholders and citizens are involved; 4) design strategies considering different stakeholders needs and different cultural approach or points of view. Our proposal is composed by multi-scale strategies of social innovation, economic improvement, environmental sustainable practices, through a new setting of spaces and uses. Our new vision of Xibin Town runs around three key words for development: “new”, that is to have a “for change” approach; “river”, that is to recognize what we may call “genius loci”; “town”, that is to recognize the urban character of Xibin and its role in a broader context.