Urban Regeneration in the Contemporary Compact City

General framework The paper refer to a research aimed to investigate operational solutions for intervention in the context of the contemporary compact city to address its distinctive challenges: high building and housing density, lack of public services and spaces, inadequacy of infrastructural facilities and fragmentation in both physical-morphological and social terms are just a few of the numerous issues of the “metropolitanized” European territory, leading to phenomena of social marginalisation and weakening of the living conditions of the average European citizen. Objectives To identify new methodological and operational tools and strategies capable of envisioning and planning a more inclusive, liveable and sustainable city, a design experimentation at the local scale was conducted over a large portion of the “Città Consolidata” of Rome, the part of the city defined in its 2008 General Master Plan as the one stably configurated in its morpho-typological characters as a consequence of the urban implementation plans of the 20th century. Results The experimentation focused on the Ostiense-Marconi district and was pursued using a systemic approach through a three-phase method (cognitive-interpretative, evaluation, proposal). It allowed the identification of exemplary characteristics and challenges of the contemporary European compact city and, consequently, the development of a framework of solutions that could be considered as best practices in terms of replicable and effective operational strategies, procedures, rules and tools.