Tools for a Better Liveability in Neighbourhoods : the ‘Environmental Island’ Design Methodology and the Citizen Engagement Process

The constant increase of private vehicular traffic and its arrogant pervasiveness worsened the urban environment liveability in many Italian cities and destroy more and more their true essence. Only in the last thirty-year period, in Europe, there was a marked acceleration in scientific research and policymaking for defining and experimenting traffic calming strategies and measures aimed at improving the level of safety and accessibility, creating more shared spaces and increasing quality of life, especially in neighbourhoods. Lagging behind other European countries, also Italy started to relate the slow speed principle to the liveable district notion; thanks to the New Traffic Code, the concept of «Environmental Island» was introduced: a «single urban zone delimited by the main road network, aimed at restoring urban spaces’ liveability». The «Environmental Island» can then be meant as a possibility not only for reorganizing vehicular mobility but also for upgrading residential urban areas and satisfying dwellers’ daily life needs. The analysis of limits and possibilities of application demonstrated that the used methodology could take from both scientific and operative viewpoints to interesting results, defining actions’ location, priority and range and providing administrations with advice on the opportunity to act. It is indeed the tight interlace between design process, involving technicians, and public consultation process, involving citizens and local administrations, that can achieve success. In order to ensure the effectiveness of this work, a widespread awareness of the need of changing rooted habits, regarding urban space use, has to be developed; this becomes then the best occasion to implement a type of collective education that leads to a more responsible behaviour from the overall sustainability viewpoint. For years, the topic here presented was faced, also featuring pilot studies in Rome, and now is going to become an applied research; indeed, thanks to the collaboration with various stakeholders, a participation process, aimed at defining the implementation of an Environmental Island in one of the oldest and most central districts of Roma: Rione Monti, is currently underway