Drosscapes and urban regeneration. Between environmental quality and circularity of resources. Rome, “Parco delle Cave"

To contribute towards the debate over the relationship between urban regeneration, environmental quality, and resource circularity, the illustrated study attempts to understand how the expectation of new, multiscalar, multidimensional, and integrated intervention instruments based on sustainable and resilient strategies can guarantee high levels of urban and environmental quality, as well as quality in terms of energy efficiency and resource circularity, thus countering the effects of climate change, of the deteriorating landscape/environment, and of socioeconomic marginalization. Starting from analysis of the current socio-political framework and from design and regulatory references that integrate into planning a new model for the ecologically-oriented city, the paper identifies, in a study area within the western periphery of Rome (Municipio XII district) strongly marked by decay and by blighted landscape, the opportunity to experiment with new design strategies that, in valorizing drosscapes, find a new design metaphor. The adopted methodology simulates a planning process extended to the entire Municipio XII district by applying an iterative and interscalar logic, and an articulation in levels and phases corresponding to different reading scales and intervention instruments. The design focus concentrates on defining the “Parco delle cave” Masterplan, with the objective of guaranteeing high levels of ecological and environmental quality, the conservation of biodiversity, and improved ecosystem services, as well as of using natural solutions to restore the quality of the air, soil, and water environmental matrices, thus triggering a new urban metabolism. The contribution underscores potentials and limitations of the proposed experimentation relating to the quality and innovation of the design solutions and the possible lines of evolution, as well as to the lack of a clear institutional governance and of sound disciplinary approaches that, in Rome, are limiting these territories’ regeneration towards compatible uses integrated into the context of new, circular and sustainable economic and productive cycles.