Cercetarea, Protectia Si Revigorarea Peisajului Cultural Rural din Zona Faget, Banat

Preservation of historical peculiarities through urban regeneration

The reconversion of Timisoara’s industrial platforms

Ph.D candidate ANDREI CONDOROȘ

Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism

Polytechnic University of Timisoara

Str. Traian Lalescu Nr. 2/A, 300223, Timisoara,

ROMANIA

[anonimizat]

Abstract: Technology changes of the XX-XXIth century, due to the spread of high-tech techniques and transfers from production to services, have changed the economic profile and local identity, leaving behind destroyed and polluted areas, partially abandoned today. Restructured, these vast areas can lead to creating exceptional living environments. Conservation and reconversion of historical particularity in the form of cultural and artistic goods is part of the new trend of urban regeneration and as a strategy for attracting capital.

Keywords: Mixed-use redevelopment, Urban renewal, Industrial reconversion, Land use, Urban Policy, Urban environment, Landscape urbanism.

1 Introduction

The disappearance of industrial sites within European cities in recent years has enabled the expansion and improvement of new public spaces and / or semi-public, furthermore they’ve opened new perspectives for cities development. Rehabilitation of old industrial sites in the spirit of environmental concepts is the main concern in many European cities.

Due to technology changes and the spread of high-tech techniques and transfer from production to services, thr economic profile of many of the European countries appears radically altered. Conservation and reconversion of historical particularities in the form of cultural and artistic goods are part of the new trend in urban regeneration and as a strategy for attracting capital.

An area of about 70 hectares expect untapped around the historic center of Timisoara, being just one of a multitude of remnants of old industrial sites. The potential of these industrial sites can not be overlooked. Also, an industrial platform untapped, isolated but with possibilities and limitless opportunities present in the vicinity of an oversized shopping center (Iulius Mall), loses consistency if not placed into a context boosted by interventions of urban regeneration in -a near future.

2 Problem formulation

The main objective of this research is the development of an advanced model of urban planning, revitalization and integration of the industrial area of Timisoara.

Prior to this study it is necessary to determine precisely the industrial areas of Timisoara, the inventory of existing economic units in the industrial area and the mapping of existing buildings.

Ultimately this will result in a database that will contain the general urban characteristics of Timisoara, commercial existing equipmentsin the industrial zone, specificities of the industrial platform and the potential role models in the future development in this respect making it appeal to models industrial conversion similar in developed European countries.

After the analysis phase, the development of technical solutions for industrial revitalization is required.

The Zonal Urban Plan (PUZ) for the studied area and related regulations should also be developed. Such a strategy for sustainable development for the industrial area should be developed taking into account the context of local, regional and national level, considering the economic situation and outlook, seen from inside and outside the country.

Industrial revitalization can be done by developing a technological park in order to attract investments, for creating an exhibition center using existing structures or creating a sports center. Built heritage and current industrial activity constitutes a starting point in developing and capitalizing on the potential of these unused spaces.

From this brief analysis, three work phases emerge. The result of the first phase will consist in obtaining a study on the systematization of industrial units, followed by the location of economic objectives and situation of the industrial area plan. The second phase will insist on an analysis of the functional and spatial aspects in the current urban context, as well as an assessment of the advantages, opportunities and threats for the industrial area (SWOT analysis), culminating with the rehabilitation plan for the studied area under the form of a technical solution. The last phase includes drawing a program of sustainable development policies and strategies of the studied area and plan to obtain a 3D simulation of the rehabilitated site.

The revitalization of the brownfields play an important role in avoiding a chaotic real estate development, thus helping to create the conditions for high-quality urban sustainable development. A high quality urban environment contributes to increasing the attractiveness to live, work and invest.

As brownfield redevelopment offers new redevelopment opportunities, this development should be integrated into a long-term regeneration plan, with implications from the public and private sector. Brownfields are in many cases part of the structure of a city that affects the quality of urban life. Issues arising from these brownfields platforms are multiple and requires resolute interventions to be restored to stage a re-use or be reintegrated into the economic cycle.

In addition, brownfields are coupled with a severe loss of jobs and, as a corollary of this, the decline of the urban environment. In this context, brownfields have a negative impact on local economic and social situation.

The problems caused by urban sprawl are multiple, such as: soil consumption useful surfaces and other finite natural resources; increasing distances between home, work and leisure areas, leading to an increase in traffic volume, the loss of jobs in the traditional city center, impairment of quality of life.

Urban regeneration is most often carried out as a long-term process, very complex and involving a broad spectrum of professional disciplines. This requires active political support and interface with different stakeholders throughout the project’s lifetime.

The regeneration of disused industrial sites, therefore, is not only one of the most important but one of the most difficult challenges for urban development and planning today.

In a broader resettlement strategy to recolonize degraded industrial lands, a project focuses on the restoration and introduction of natural processes and landscape characteristics. Particular natural processes for land are valued by forcing interventions, integrating cultural heritage, environmental values and recovery of a new development under a scheme that capitalized previously unseen natural processes.

3 Solving the issue

An adjustment to the new economy without losing completely the local ‚identity’ requires innovation. Specific qualities of the resulted sites provides the necessary justification and the raw material for new projects. Landscape strategies have the potential to challenge the bureaucratic limits of the authorities, while expanding its scope of possibilities.

Traditional urban design Provesi to be Costly, slow and inflexible for Which issues related to infrastructure, ecology, urban densification and expansion, increasingly more often appeal to the working tools of Landscape Architecture. Meanwhile, a number of landscape urbanism projects have successfully resisted the speculative logic of the private sector and the state sector, highly technical and bureaucratic.

While the real estate business reached a maximum in recent years, large post-industrial tracts needs 'cleansing' and inteligent reprogramming of the place, interpreted not in conservative sense but rather contemporary, through a logic discovery of the existing reality and the capacity offered by the site, clearly distinguishing what is unusable from what is a potential.

Increasingly more, the landscape architects and urban designer have the task of working with disused postindustrial or vague interstitial lands facing simultaneous challenges of restoring the ecosystem and simultaneously to design solutions to improve the economy.

About 120 such projects have been implemented at European level in an integrated urban regeneration program. The natural landscape has not been restored but rather organic stabilized, and the local industrial heritage recycled and as a consequence, huge relics have been adapted and reused as centers for conducting cultural activities. According to Johnson and Rossana Torgen Vaccarino 'such projects have become role models, in which unseen, unwanted residues, are brought to new life by using sublime qualities of the artistic engineering and form'.

In a broader strategy of degraded industrial land resettlement, a project focuses on the restoration and introduction of natural processes and landscape characteristics.

Peculiarities of natural processes for land are valued by forcing interventions, integrating cultural heritage, environmental values and recovery of a new development under a scheme that capitalized previously unseen natural processes.

The intervention is based on a "scattered and mobile» system of parks, enabling flexible employment as plots become available for new interventions accumulated over the years. The solution takes into account a hypothetical developmental point, not a permanent condition, but a succession of states that correspond to different stages of metamorphosis.

New outdoor areas will be born, will disappear, will be moved, depending on the evolution of construction works and the pace at which these vast lands are gradually released in order to draw a map of real mobility, like crop rotations.

The project’s working phases, imposed somehow by the availability, at different time intervals of the usable parcels, imprints to the entire process two speed levels. Temporary facility creates a new public perception about the new development – a significant expanse of green space, clusters of vegetation that define new development plots, infrastructure and progressive building of utilities and amenities that define spatial configuration as designed. These elements succeed and replace each other, disappear, compose together in a singular and original fabric. Attention to the building itself is much diminished in the process of transforming the land. Instead of the new development being organized via its built forms, it will have a flowing shape, defined by a system of hollows that guarantees beauty, serenity, accessibility, identity.

The project reverses the formal and structural role of the figuration and land, building an open space. Instead, the attention is directed to various programmed hollows. This network of hollows results from a careful inventory of existing conditions, habitat, historical fragments, existing infrastructure corridors and new programs.

This design process gives the new development a increased flexibility, as the model created by the "archipelago" ensures that each islands, developed autonomous, will finally ensure consistency and coherence to the whole.

The new developments are based on contemporary urban expression using means inspired by the past and the city's industrial heritage. Architecture, design, urban network and public spaces are all evolutive processes taken into account in the view of preservation and improvement of the inherited heritage.

Industrial heritage is therefore regarded as an asset, a positive feature likely to generate a qualitative development at the local level, playing an active role to consolidate a local identity, the local community and tourists.

3.1 Promoting mixed-use utilities, increase local heritage and encouragement of public participation

In close relation with the nature of the terrain and position, new urban planning strategies will have to accept the responsibility of new trends in urban development based on a multifunctional diversity and in agreement with the inherited values, ensuring a balance between the functions of independent living (residential) and common, keeping equally a attractive living environment.

It is necessary to outline a strategy inspired by the historical heritage and memory of the site, ensuring that objectives found on the spot to be to a great extent reused and their demolition serving as a last resort.

Organizing and supporting actions that lead to greater community involvement in every stage of the project should be integrated into the project management plan. In this respect, fragments or annexes, part of the heritage buildings found on site can be rehabilitated, transformed into a center to provide informations to those interested also serving as a meeting place and discussion of specific aspects of the project. Subsequently, the chamber can serve as an info-center and museum, an element of attraction, part of a whole and where the entire process of realization, phases of work, the development steps in the form of photos, templates and descriptive plans, to be presented

3.2 The creation of new public spaces, restoration and transformation of existing ones.

Obtaining an urban slab with dynamic mixed-uses, through a careful process of phisical planning can shape a quality urban landscape. Public space is the driving catalyst to support and drive the transformation and conversion, paving the way for the changes to come.

This development leads to the creation of pleasent residential districts, reconnecting the decommissioned areas to the life inside the city, improve the public space by promoting alternative modes of travel (pedestrian and bicycle) and define a new network of public transportation, creating new bouts of movement to link new recycled areas to the historic center and protecting existing plant fund, improving it.

3.3 Development of new heritage devices and immovable property following a widening diversity and their identities.

The new devices should be visually attractive, the existence of an urban scenography creates the conditions for a sustainable development in line with modern urban trends. Moreover, their ability to function as a huge fan that draws people, money and activities, through the volume of work and quality of interventions, ensure the success of such interventions.

The new housing development should provide a significant number of homes while ensuring diversity and a high standard of quality, integration and partially masking them into the new landscape setting being a priority. To maintain a high standard of living, the real estate complex will include construction with special purpose, serving the interests of all social classes, thus promoting social cohesion precepts.

3.4 Contribution to economic development by promoting and creating centers of excellence

Further development of the site will make possible the maintenance of the existing economic activities and attract others. Maintaining productive units at a much reduced scale that can serve the personal interest of the community and ultimately the new investment is a priority. The presence of such types of business and putting them in the right context leads to the creation of a local identity, focusing the attention of the great mass of visitors or local residents, animating the space and ensuring continuity and tradition.

3.5 Attracting and promoting cultural activities, events and happenings. Creating an attractive center for everybody.

A wide range of events and happenings with artistic and culture influences can be channeled into a new center of social interest by creating a special infrastructures through a careful process of recycling and use of the old industrial buildings, construction, fixed or mobile structures, annexes.

The whole ensemble, through its specific architecture features, can provide support in recreating a unique historical background, personal, local, modern, high-tech for a free artistic expression, choreographed or spontaneous.

Public art can play an important role by promoting an attractive environment, of high standards, a powerful help in strengthening the community or its reconsolidation. Art can become a focal center, that can develop the spirit and identity of the place together with the pleasure it can give to visitors and residents.

The artistic act of creation, can act as a catalyst for cultural expression and experience. Creative workshops, exhibitions and sale, art on the street, ad hoc fairs can easily animate the space making it attractive.

These addings with cultural touch can become key elements for creating a local identity and a positive image internationally.

4 Reccomendations

4.1 Key recommendations that must be considered by stakeholders in the project

Before anything, the first recommendation is that the stakeholders trully understand the cultural, legislative and legal requirements in order to engage in the process. Subsequently, the allocation of sufficient budgetary resources to ensure that stakeholder engagement is implemented and effectively throughout the entire project. Investment costs are unlikely to be higher than in the current urbanization works; however, they represent only a small part of the total costs required to develop such a project.

Very important it is to provide state guarantees for the objectives and content of the commitment by the parties to gain consistency. This support came from policy makers at the political level, and developers should arise with the project and continue throughout its duration.

Identification and evaluation of the interested stakeholders in the project and then choosing the most appropriate methods of engagement depending on the target groups and their skills is another recommendation. Each commitment exercise should be planned according to each individual circumstances involved. A legislative framework regarding the stakeholder engagement is not enough to maximize the potential benefits of such a project for the development of such disused industrial sites.

4.2 Reccomendations regarding investments and marketing

The challenges arising from the development of such an ambitios project of industrial reconversion can not be financed exclusively by the public. It is necessary to attract substantial contributions from private investors. Public and private partnerships are not a sole objective, but it’s just one of the financial techniques to develop such a project. Such an approach should have benefits for all parties involved to the same extent in risk sharing and bringing mutual expertise.

All parties involved in the project, both public and private, must have a clear picture of their own ideas and expectations. They must know what they want, what can and what they cannot. Transparent cooperation and in detail communication throughout the entire project is essential.

Private partners should be selected through an open and transparent tender procedure, following a competitive dialogue between the parties. Brand qualities of the partners, both private and public, to manage complex processes of such a large scale is more important than the ability to perform itself various tasks.

The financial context is only one aspect to consider in the process of industrial conversion. Both to the teams level, the social context is equally important.

Promoting such a step needs special attention; obviously, as for the private partners to join the proposed regeneration effort. The project also needs an 'identity' and a positive image to sell, as a first step towards a strategic marketing approach. Branding and communication are the key activities of a strategic approach to successful marketing.

4.3. Reccomendations regarding industrial heritage

One recommendation is to create an inventory and assessment of heritage buildings located on the industrial site in question, part of the material needed to prepare the master plan knowingly. This will help to achieve consensus for future actions and decisions without compromising the integrity and cultural history of the site. Cultural heritage can be enhanced by organizing mass events, hearty, traditional and with social links with the industrial past. A convincing and professional PR can increase the acceptance rate among the society popularizing the cultural heritage and thereby connecting the industrial past with current modern life.

It is essential that a full assessment on specific conservation, costs, special skills and resources needed for an effective and sustainable restoration should be developed to be drawn up.

4.4. Recommendations on project performance and durability

In this respect high quality sustainable regeneration processes are to be promoted, as to maximize the marketing potential of brownfields land.

Using creative tools for increasing public participation, the level of information and awareness regarding such interventions in the disused industrial sites, among the general public, politicians and professionals, also to communicate with investors and other stakeholdersIt can be an advantage.

It is important to recognize the fact that disused brownfields have frequently a greater negative impact on areas of sustainability issues than the usual, standard, of urban development. These could be environmental, economic or social. Making an assessment of the development’s sustainability should be followed by a management plan, supported by monitoring plans, review and audit.

It is essential that all parties involved in the future development to agree right from the very start of the initiative on the responsibilities for sustainability issues and people in charge with decision-making power.

The inclusion of environmental issues right from the planning phase of the project is essential.

4.5. Reccomendations regarding technical issues

The success of the new technologies in rehabilitation can not be ensured only through a strong marketing campaign, demonstrative, aiming to get public acceptability. Legislation is also a key criterion for the selection and development of remedial solutions and technologies utilized. Life cycle assessment and cost-benefit analysis is an essential step in the planning process of remediation.

In parallel, more efficient means of communication between technical, financial and marketing sectors as well as in relation to the political class and public opinion, concise and well-structured information about the project is needed, sometimes only a few pages.

4.6. Recommendations on environmental issues that such a project raises

Natural heritage is important for maintaining a local identity and to raise awareness about environmental issues. Environmental legislation requires a management and monitoring plan to ensure the conservation and habitat’s protection.

It is important to establish natural values since the beginning of the project. This may require careful programming and specialized expertise. All groups and organizations involved in the project must be aware of the decisions on future measures directed against natural heritage. Brownfields can be the development environment of unique habitats, which arose as a result of these temporary use of land.

5 Conclusions

Celebrating the remarkable industrial monuments and ruins scattered todays in the city, gigantis facilities, true cathedrals of the past decades and the areas they serve, with great talent and consistent capital investment can be the kick off of an extensive process of urban and cultural development, a new lifestyle, a mix of means of expression.

The politics of "tabula rasa" – the destroying of all vestiges of the past must acquire creative accents of heritage recovery. A political balance must be found between popular and populist approaches, one to attract customers through a discreet but effective reconversion of the site.

References:

[1] Sebastien Marot, “Sub-urbanism and the Art of Memory”, London, AA Publications, 2003

[2] Sebastien Marot, “The reclaiming of Sites”, in Corner, Ed., Recovering Landscape, pag.48-49

[3] Rossana Vaccarino and Torgen Johnson, “Recycling Landscape: Recycling for Change”in Landscape Architecture: Stretegies for the construction of Landscapee vol.3, no.2G, 1997

[4] Dominique Perrault,”park in an Old Siderurgical Plant, Caen(France)”, AV Monographs: Pragmatism and Landscape no.91, 2001

[5] Andrea Branzi, “Weak and Spread”, public lecture at Berlage Institute, Rotterdam, Netherland, 2003.

[6] Michel Desvignes, “Infiltration strategy”, Techniques and Architecture, 2001

[7] Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, “S, M, L, XL”, Rotterdam:010 Publishers, 1995

[8] Charles Waldheim, editor, “The Landscape Urbanism Reader”, Princeton Architecture Press, New York, 2006

[9] Jannemarie de Jonge,“Landscape Architecture between Politics and Science. An integrative perspective on landscape planning and design in the network society”, 2009, PhD thesis Wageningen Univesity, Netherlands;

[10] Massimo tadi, “Timișoara 2020 overall vision. A case study”, Ed. Alinea, 2007;

[11] European Urban Knowledge Network ( www.eukn.org )

[12] European Urban Knowledge Network – Romanian National Focal Point

(http://www.eukn.org/romania/) Home/E-library/Urban Environment/Urban Renewal, “Urban rehabilitation and integration of an industrial area of Cluj Napoca city in accord with the sustainable development requirements”

[13] European Urban Knowledge Network ( http://www.eukn.org/eukn/), Home/E-library/Urban Renewal/Bownfield development/Regeneration of a former industrial zone – Seraing.

[14] International Brownfields Case Study: Emscher Park, Germany

(http://www.epa.gov/brownfields/partners/emscher.html )

[15] Fragmentary industrial areas and urban renewal: The case of an industrial axis in Guadalajara, Mexico

(http://www.palgrave-journals.com/udi/journal/v14/n3/full/udi200917a.html )

[16] ERIGES, Seraing's Autonomous Municipal Agency ( http://www.eriges.be/ )

[17] REVIT – Revitalising Industrial Sites ( http://www.revit-nweurope.org/ )

[18] RESCUE – Regeneration of European Sites in Cities and Urban Environments

http://www.rescue-europe.com/index_mf.html ) Best Practice Guidance for Sustainable Brownfield Regeneration, May 2005.

[19] CABERNET – Concerted Action on Brownfield and Economic Regeneration Network, ( www.cabernet.org.uk )

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