The second reinassance of Urbino. De carlo and an organic model for the recovery of historical centers

The case represented by Urbino today, which took shape through the first and the second “Piano Regolatore”, designed by Giancarlo De Carlo for Urbino between 1958 and 1994, perfectly embodies the role of a methodological model for the restore of the Italian historical city centers. De Carlo committed a large part of his life into the realization of this organic project of the City, with the intent of re-establishing a community with a glorious past; making it able to recognize again its identity in the synergistic work of an architect and an enlightened politi- cian. The First Plan redesigned the urban fabric, returning refounding its lost equilibrium, while the Second redesigned the safeguard limit; actualizing the defensive system, made by a medieval matrix, creating a green belt. These two interventions on a territorial scale were supported by an innovative idea of a widespread University City, designed to guarantee vital life to the new urban structure, in order to realize its new renaissance. De Carlo’s work in Urbino explicit a process of global recovery of the Historic Center, artic- ulated and stereoscopic, which revolves around the figure of the architect, the only actor able to recognize the disciplinary limits so much to expand them outside their field of traditional action. The analysis of this experience makes explicit the farsightedness of a flexible modus operandi, through which it is possible to implement the recovery of the Italian historical centers, guar- anteeing a measured revitalization; made of caesura and strong choices, sometimes authoritar- ian, but always carefully considered.