Multiple Scales of Space and Time on the Territory Configuration

Abstract

This article deals with processes of urban configuration prevalent in different periods and corresponding urban forms. It discusses urban vitality and networks of centralities, or policentric urban areas, as possible models for sustainable cities. Policentrism is here understood as an attribute of the urban form whose configuration reveals multiple centers of different hierarchies, different social processes with distinct intentions and spatial scales, all networked together. Different urban tissues, with distinct rhythms of change, either expanding, contracting or recreating, take place and indicate different future perspectives. Centrality cannot be not defined by design as it may be planned but not designed - the urban form is not sufficient to make it happen. It is associated with vitality, made out of singular attributes that attract multiple individual cumulative initiatives that, in some circumstances, have collective repercussions. They transform texture into vital places with future perspectives. Policentric urban model, therefore, understands city as the place where different social processes converge. The change and continuity of the urban forms that make them visible indicate distinct cumulative periods of time, whose permanence indicate different values and meanings socially still acknowledged.