Safety, Liveability and Resilience of Riverside Cities. The Role of Residual Areas between Land and Water

This paper proposes a reflection on the technologies that can help to restore the shattered equilibrium in riverside city areas, which is today ever more disturbed by the effects of climatic change. It involves promoting a new culture of safety and liveability in the settlement environment, concentrating on projects of care, maintenance and regeneration of functionalities, productivity, and natural and man-made resource performance in the residual areas between the river and the city. It offers a vision that goes beyond the specific architectural-engineering works traditionally used to resolve the problems caused by water on settlement systems. In fact, by paying particular consideration to the residual areas between land and water, works carried out on the fluvial system can become an opportunity to implement an integrated process in which one moves from the reduction in vulnerability of single natural or artificial elements towards the strengthening of resilience features of the urban environment in its entirety.