FROM THE GRID TO THE LAYER: POST-INDUSTRIAL CITY AS CITY IN (MORPHOLOGICAL) TRANSITION

Starting from the assumption that industrial settlements have different roles in urban fabric, depending on their location, on their typology, on their size and their age of settlement, as well as on the pattern and the structure of the city considered, the paper will examine productive areas through six methodologies of urban analysis methods, ranging from urban morphology approach to perceptive approach. The different methods are employed to understand a different formal role of productive plants and they are applied to several cases studies from all over the world illustrating historical productive settlements already regenerated or still waiting for reconversion and a contemporary productive sites. The paper will analyze the way in which urban analysis methods can engender different visions of the city, and specifically different approaches in the regeneration design of industrial dismantled areas to tackle the common misconception that post-industrial cities are places where no clear urban form is recognizable anymore, suffering of a lack of global urban vision, looking for new city’s identity and vocation. Depending on the capability of recognizing their urban role, industrial dismantled areas, can be either considered as brown fields that prevent urban renewal or as strategical elements to regenerate the city, providing new opportunities. The final goal is to set a methodology of morphological analysis able to grasp the transitional character of urban phenomenon, reading the post-industrial city as a stage of a continuous transition in urban form and not as a final step. In this perspective urban regeneration processes of urban industrial dismantled areas can be conceived as impermanent configurations originating from the historical traces and types but also anticipating future morphologies.