Climate change and environmental deterioration have revived the importance of land for human survival: a crucial issue through the whole of the XX century when the political questions of its ownership and availability became closely intertwined with the urban questions of its use and design.

The land is conceived today as a common good to be protected at any price, but town planning and architecture seem unable to take it as their basic tool for socially-oriented projects.

Retracing the evolution of the idea of land in Europe, from the early XX century to the present, aims to make our public programming and welfare politics more effective.

CONTENTS
Preface, by Philippe Panerai 7
Foreword 14

1 FREEING THE URBAN LAND 22
The ground: an issue across the whole twentieth century 23
The garden city movement and its legacy 28
The plan of Canberra 36
The ‘liberation’ of urban land in the modern movement 40 
High-rise building 50
From availability to consumption of urban land 54
The Italian case: protection of the historic centers and the ground 64
Notes 70
Box 1 Density 74
Box 2 Chandigarh’s Capitol by Le Corbusier 84

2 THE LAND IN THE RECOVERY CULTURE 90
Reviewing the urban housing stock 91
Characters of different urban areas and recovery guidelines  93
The architecture and urban renovation 97
Recovery has become complicated since the 1980s 102
Land and conversion of abandoned industrial areas 105
Revision of project tools 113
Territory as a palimpsest 116
Low-rise building or built landscape? 122
Planning as ‘design of ground’ 126
Vittorio Gregotti: context, ground and architecture 132
Notes 138
Box 1 Iba Ruhr: the ground in the territorial recovery of a shrinking region 142
Box 2 The Mediterranean model for the conversion of disused port areas 147
Box 3 Ground and infrastructures design 150

3 LAND AND ENVIRONMENTAL EMERGENCY 154
A new interdisciplinary idea of ground 155
Town planning no longer up to the problems 158
Architectural crisis 160
New clues for the project: theories 164
From Landscape Urbanism to Greenwashing 166
The territorialist project 169
Porosity 172
The practice of planning and design 177
Pilot experiences: European models  178
Other models: Usa and China 184
Local variations of landscape design: Dutch water cities 188
The work of Frits Palmboom 192
New programs focused on sustainable urban regeneration 195
Adaptation of urban regeneration programs 200
Land, shrinking cities and urban farming 204
Renaturalizing the city is not enough 209
Notes 214
Box 1 Protection of urban seafront searise, dams and the Scheveningen case 220
Box 2 The Rotterdam model: plans and projects 224

CONCLUSIONS 228
References for the design of ground 229
Some research directionss 233
Notes 245
Bibliography 261
Credits 249

Benedetto Di Cristina
Former professor of Architecture at Florence University and practicing architect, has published research papers in the fields of social housing and site planning.

Marco Massa
Former professor of urbanism at Florence University and professional town planner, has directed and published research works in the fields of urban design and renovation in Europe.