A critical overview on the outcomes of mending of the suburbs. Case studies and experiments G124

The G124 project, the working group created by Renzo Piano, the senator of the Italian Republic, had as its objective the recovery of abandoned areas of the suburbs through small mending interventions that could trigger regeneration through new jobs, micro enterprises and start up, light construction sites and widespread, thus creating new jobs.The G124 was based on the great urban challenge of the coming decades: the fertilization of the areas that the Anglo-Saxons called brownfields, areas rich in humanity and energy, inhabited by young people full of hopes and desire to change. In 2013, for this purpose, Renzo Piano apprenticed young architects who have worked to identify and redesign the city edges, selected on proposals from the young people themselves, in particular areas abandoned in Rome, Turin, Catania and Milan. In this paper we outline the crucial characters of the G124 proposals, on which the projects of regeneration are based. Although beneficial, those projects should not be only a superficial indiscriminate “green injection”. We must not forget, in fact, that the green areas within the city, in close relationship with the whole urban landscape, assume both an aesthetic-architectural and a social-recreational function, contributing to psychological well-being of the inhabitants, which was actually one of the main goals of the G124 workshop. So, if the redemption of the suburbs begins from the recovery of residual open spaces, be-cause the growth of the city wants to be implosive rather than explosive, it is important to assess today the transaction effective as a whole. The requirement that the critical reading instead assumed, specifically, is to test the effect of various interventions on the territory, where they were made. In particular, our research focuses on the project in Rome, Under the Viaduct of Presidents, in the north-east periphery, on the boundary of the city and discuss about the outcome as a product incubator in the territory.