Transformative Urban Regeneration: Two Paradigmatic Examples in Boston and Paris

Cities play a fundamental role in the global challenge of climate change, but in most cases financial obstacles and lack of skilled human resources restrain the development of transformative actions. The recovery from Covid-19 pandemics brings a new stimulus for urban sustainable transitions, allocating a large amount of monetary resources for urban regeneration initiatives connected with the SDGs and the Green Deals objectives. Indeed urban regeneration emerges as a key mechanism to address both post-pandemics recovery and climate challenges, facilitating the implementation of urban mitigation and adaptation measures. District-scale projects can become enablers of city-wide sustainable transition, allowing the experimentation of innovative technical solutions to activate multi-systemic transformations. A large literature has been produced over the last 20 years over the topics of Urban Resilience and Sustainable Transition. Nevertheless a multi-sectoral approach to district-scale transformations is just emerging and needs to be integrated through evidences from best practices. This paper aims to identify a portfolio of measures able to transform existing neighborhoods into zero-carbon and climate-resilient systems. With this purpose, two case studies have been explored as paradigmatic examples of sustainable district redevelopment, and namely the Clichy-Batignolles eco-district (Paris) and the Talbot-Norfolk Triangle Eco-Innovation District (Boston).