Planning and design strategies for activating resilience

The concept of resilience, especially when applied to urban and metropolitan contexts, has been experiencing many different theoretical outputs in the international scientific debate. Currently, indeed, there is no common opinion on the concept of urban and territorial resilience. However, projected increasing natural hazards oblige scholars, planners and architects to find adequate operative planning and design solutions. Indeed, the major issues arise when it comes to operationalising resilience. With this research, we strive to give a reference framework to define a place-based and people-centred approach to resilience. In order to pursue the place-based approach, we focus on a specific territorial context of the City of Turin: the course of the Po River. The river context, recognised as a multifaceted socio-ecological system, allows for a comprehensive understanding of different assets: environmental, ecological, natural, anthropical and social. In particular, these elements can be traced in the experience of River Agreements, a voluntary planning and participatory tool used to enhance the resilience and sustainability of river courses (both in terms of water quality and social awareness). More recently, this experience has supported the drafting and implementation of local planning tools: the revision of the plan of the Piedmontese Po River and the Metropolitan General Plan of Turin (PTGM).