Bicycle network is an opportunity to design the public space. The case study of Montesilvano

The Research Convention between the Department of Architecture of Pescara and the Municipality of Montesilvano has as its purpose the identification of an Agenda of Guidelines for the Qualification of Bicycle Routes. After about a year, the first results suggest to conceptualize some issues differently. First, you have to define the terms correctly. In Europe, reflection on slow mobility is linked to the rationalization/reduction of traffic and is always linked to both sustainability and ecology. The urban fabric of Montesilvano was heavily influenced by the relationship with the large territorial and urban infrastructures. And it is part of a more general story: the one regarding traffic engineering which, since the postwar period, conceived the idea that we should invest only in large network infrastructures for solving mobility problems. It is not enough. You need to come back to think about smaller networks and, in particular, on bicycle routes. Working on the hypothesis that cycling mobility networks are the potential matrices of a new land project that regenerates urban space, triggering processes of retraining of crossed contexts, forces us to think differently. To be more careful about the specifics. To assume the notion of public space as central.