University of Miami, School of architecture, Coral Gables, Miami, FL, USA

DIAP, Sapienza

The role of urban morphology in the analysis of urban fabric in planned cities. Formative process of founded cities in Florida, Italy and Spain: case studies and comparison. Alessandro Camiz, Ph.D. Postdoctoral fellow (Sapienza, Università di Roma), adjunct professor (University of Miami, School of Architecture), scientific coordinator of the AGREEMENT OF CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC COOPERATION BETWEEN THE UNIVERSITY OF ROME "LA SAPIENZA" (ITALY) AND THE UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI alessandro.camiz@uniroma1.it The role of urban morphology in the analysis of urban tissues has become increasingly important in recent years. The research aims to investigate its application to the founded cities in Florida, Italy and Spain by analyzing the formation of building types and their contribution to the shape of the planned city. The developement of cities in Florida happens to be quite different from that of other areas in the East Coast. The strong reliance on agriculture in the state of Florida and the absence of a modern infrastructure system until the 1920s, results in a substantial delay in the formative process of urban fabric. If elsewhere in the American continent this happens through city foundations as early as the sixteenth century, here the process seems to be consolidating in the typical planned urban form mainly in the twentieth century. Although there are minor cases of small urban settlements founded at an earlier period, characterized by the construction of an infrastructure: in the form of a military fort (St. Augustine), or a train station (Jacksonville) as a premise to the subsequent planning of urban fabric, or in rare cases with the renovation of Amerindian funeral settlements. 1564, Jacksonville 1565, Sant Agustín 1698, Pensacola 1823, Tampa 1824, Tallahassee 1827, Ocala 1828, Key West 1838, Fort Lauderdale 1853, Gainesville 1875, Orlando 1880, Ybor City 1836, Miami, Fort Dallas These early examples have a core foundation articulated on a Main Street or arranged with a grid of streets centered on the central square. The planning process of the urban fabric and its metropolitan growth are consolidated in Florida especially in the twentieth century as a result of the process of " inside colonization " due to the gradual migration of people of senior age (over 50 years) from the Northeast and from the Midwest, initially in the form of temporary residence and later permanently. The best known examples are Palm Beach, Coral Gables , Miami Beach , Opa-Locka, Venice. The set of founded urban centers is Florida is a repertoire of modern urban projects, yet not considered in literature, and to correlate with the Italian cities founded in the 30s and 40s but also with founded modern cities in Franco's Spain (1940-1965). The model of the bastide-terranova, of medieval origin, used in foundation is taken into the modern era and expanded as part of a highly active urban policy including the control of social space. If in the Italian and Spanish cases, the Government was the main engine of development, in Florida, instead, the private sector property developers were the main actors. The systematic comparison between some selected cases of founded cities in Florida, well documented and mostly unpublished, with the Italian and Spanish cases, will allow to draw some considerations on the morphology of urban and regional planning policies, and more generally on the typology. The program is based on the exchange of professors and researchers of the two Universities underwriters of an international agreement ( Sapienza, Faculty of Architecture, University of Miami, School of Architecture). Expected results The case studies will be analyzed during the visiting professorship of Jean-Francoise Lejeune (Director of Graduate studies, School of Architecture, University of Miami) at Sapienza in spring 2014, comparing founded cities of Florida in with the cities founded in Franco's Spain, and in a seminar to be held in the University of Miami, School of Architecture, taught by specialists who carry out research at Sapienza (A. Camiz, G. Strappa). Unpublished sources will be identified and the methods for reading the formative process of urban fabric will be considered, with focus on the carrier type, its synchronic and diachronic variants, and the substrate type. The case studies will be illustrated with examples of founded cities in Italy, Florida and Spain. A workshop of urban design, (involving the two Universities), will be dedicated to the analysis of the urban fabric as a premise for the contemporary design process. The results of the research, consisting of some selected case studies of founded cities, the unpublished documents (plans , drawings , photographic material etc. ), the lectures given in the two seminars on the systematic comparison of case studies, and a selection of projects of the workshop, with particular attention to methodological aspects, will be published in a volume in English with international diffusion , whose editorial format will be agreed by the two project partners (Sapienza , University of Miami) . References J-F. Lejeune, Garden cities in Florida: The Grid, the Park and the Model-T, in Tagliaventi, G. (ed.), Garden City: a Century of Theories, Models, Experiences, Gangemi Editore, 1994, pp. 221-266. J.-F. Lejeune, North-South: Rationalism and Tradition in the New Towns of the Reconstruction in Spain, in Proceedings ACSA International Conference Istanbul 2001 “Oriental-Occidental, Washington, ACSA, 2002. J-F. Lejeune, Planned Cities in Spain, 1944-1969, in Cities of Stone, Catalogue of the exhibition at the Biennale di Venezia, 2006, Milano: Marsilio, 2006, pp. 158-167. J-F. Lejeune, Futurismo e città di fondazione: da Littoria a Guidonia, città aerofuturista, in Angiolo Mazzoni e l’architettura futurista, Fondazione CE.S.A.R. Roma (Italy), June 2010, pp. 59-74 A. Shulman, et. al., Miami Modern Metropolis, Miami: Bass Museum of Art, Balcony Press, 2010 G. Ciucci, F.Dal Co, M. Manieri-Elia, M.Tafuri, The American City from the Civil War to the New Deal, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1979 (English version) G. Strappa, Nuove città mediterranee, in AA.VV. Metafisica costruita, Roma 2002. G. Strappa (ed.), Studi sulla periferia est di Roma, Francoangeli, Milano 2012 G. Strappa, Atlante di architettura moderna a Roma e nel Lazio, Roma 1997 E. Guidoni, L'architettura delle città medievali, in "Mélanges de l'Ecole française de Rome", n.2, 1974, p..481 A. Camiz, Redesigning suburban public spaces with the transect theory, in Abitare il nuovo/abitare di nuovo ai tempi della crisi, M. Bellomo et al. (ed.) Clean, Napoli 2012, pp. 111-121.