History for urban regeneration: a new perspective. The PRG ‘08 of the Municipality of Rome

The metropolisation processes that, in recent decades, have determined deep territorial transformation, together with the identity features and the intrinsic characteristics of fragility of the contemporary city, recall the need for a unitary, integrated and interscalar public government strategy aimed at urban regeneration. A strategy able to seize the specific nature of places at all scales, as a form of self-representation for local communities and as a means for restoring connections between physical continuity and social integration and between formal specificity and historical-cultural identity. In this framework, the paper focuses on the role of historical-cultural permanence within the processes of urban regeneration, starting from the experience of the Masterplan (PRG ‘08) of the Municipality of Rome, which, in particular, introduces a new perspective, assuming, among its priority options, the role of history for high-quality transformation and recalling, on the one hand, the need for an interpretative description of the historical and cultural structure of the territory in all its expressions and specificities, and, on the other, the need to reaffirm the centrality and transversality of the design dimension for the protection and enhancement of the components of the Historic City. In particular, this perspective is actualized through the description of the urban project of the Anagnina-Romanina Centrality, one of the 18 urban and metropolitan centralities of the PRG ‘08.