Dalla Green Station alla Blue Station. Il ruolo della riqualificazione delle stazioni ferroviarie nella transizione ecologica delle città: modello di calcolo e possibili misure di mitigazione e compensazione degli impatti

Nowadays, mobility represents the main productive process: this means that terri-torial sustainability must necessarily include sustainable movements as a key component. The increase in transport entity and transport routes, economic con-venience, and, last but not least, a higher environmental awareness, are leading to higher consideration of the use of railways. In this framework, railway stations represent complex objects requiring significant material flows, which make up their ecological footprint. In this sense, a railway station is the last industrial plant to be accepted in contemporary cities. The last two years of pandemics have amplified both the need for tangible sustainability and the demand for active mobility-friendly cities. Discussing the sustainability of a station involves examining and measuring its ecological footprint, to provide active support to the targeted planning and design of mitigation measures. Their impact and effectiveness are cer-tainly amplified by the natural central role of the railway stations. And what if the pursuit of sustainability for the railway stations could be intertwined with the search for quality collective spaces? The answer is positive. The proposed algorithm allows shifting from a qualitative view (so to say, measured on a flat-rate basis), to a quantitative view of the pos-sible improvement actions on the operation and maintenance processes of railway stations. Moreover, through minor adaptations, it could also be applied to indus-trial or residential processes. In the framework of the related scientific literature and of the current in-progress research fields, the inherent innovation of the research consists in providing an interpretation of the railway station as a driving force for the requalification of the surrounding building and social fabric, rather than as a mere infrastructural element of the railway network, or a node of the transport system. In the last 20 months, the issues related to the containment of the Cov-Sars-2 pandemic have also sensitized the debate on the economic impact of mobility and infrastructures. An effective ecological transition cannot be merely linked to de-carbonization: the problem has a wider dimension in terms of system dynamics, which requires surpassing micro-marginalist approaches. The positive effects of small actions, even when performed at larger scales (the system of incentives or tax reliefs) are nullified by the inertia of climate change; instead, discontinuities must be overcome through complex and onerous actions. Interventions on big function containers such as railway stations represent a strong action, which benefits both infrastructural investments and urban ecological transitions. Their transformation can be a leverage for the functional redesign of the urban areas around them.

Nel mondo contemporaneo la mobilità di persone e merci si configura come il principale processo produttivo: questo significa che la sostenibilità di un territorio deve per forza di cose essere prima di tutto una sostenibilità degli spostamenti. L’aumento degli spostamenti e soprattutto delle percorrenze, la convenienza economica e, non ultima, una maggiore sensibilità ambientale configurano una sempre maggiore rilevanza dell’uso del mezzo ferroviario. In questo quadro nella città contemporanea, le stazioni sono oggetti urbani sempre più complessi che richiedono quotidianamente rilevanti flussi di materie, producono altrettanto ingenti flussi di materie come sottoprodotti di lavorazione e scarti. In sintesi, esercitano una rilevante impronta ecologica. Indagare la sostenibilità di una stazione si traduce quindi nell’indagare e misurare tangibilmente questa impronta per fornire un supporto attivo nella pianificazione e progettazione mirata delle misure di mitigazione con una efficacia amplificata dal ruolo naturale di centralità proprio delle stazioni ferroviarie.