(Re)Inventing Rome

I attended the launch of Rome’s participation in the C40 Inventing Cities competition today and was pleasantly surprised and inspired to form a team to participate. When I think back to the early 2000s when I launched Sustainable Rome, it was so rare to hear anyone talk about carbon-neutral and resilient urban regeneration. Now I hear these words coming from the Mayor of Rome! And even more impressive, from the President of FS – Sistemi Urbani (a branch of the national railway which owns a lot of abandoned or underutilized urban real estate). Everyone is now rising to the challenge of carbon neutral urban development and regeneration. It’s about time.

The seven themes of my book Rome Works are all applicable in evaluating (and planning) projects for the five sites selected for Rome. In fact, years ago I did a project for the Mira Lanza site which addressed water, waste, energy, mobility, and green space through community solutions to urban fabric. These are the backbone of the courses I teach for Sapienza and CalPoly and the methodology I use in design workshops. It’s great to see them now being proposed as a global standard for city sites.