Contrasting a Market-Led Tendency Towards Social and Functional Separation. Outcomes of a Comparative Research in Milan, Copenhagen and Hamburg

The redevelopment of inner city urban areas has been a main concern for European cities dealing with post-industrial restructuring in the last decades and large scale urban projects have been extensively and investigated by urban research. The raise of a complex interplay among different public and private actors as well as issues of social (in)justice have been analysed and discussed by critical research work with reference to the phases in which the projects and the masterplans have been conceived (see for example: Salet and Gualini, 2007; Fainstein, 2010).

While these large scale urban projects are now mostly implemented, it is worth investigating how spatial and social organization processes are developing in these new urban areas which tend to display a significant role in hosting a consistent number of those inhabitants who “return to the city” in a phase of re-urbanisation. In this respect, driving research questions may be: under which conditions, and with which expectations, do people decide to settle in the central city? What sort of city-space has been produced? How and why are uses influencing urban qualities? Which are the elements that allow and support a mix of functions and social groups in the face of prevalent tendencies towards separation and segregation?

Along these questions, we have been analysing redevelopment projects that have been explicitly targeting a mix of different functions and social groups, openness and accessibility of open public spaces and when the ambiguity of new categories and uses has been challenging consolidated urban planning traditions and regulatory systems.

The paper presents the results of a comparative empirical research which has been developed in three European cities by an interdisciplinary research group (urban sociologists, urban planners, urban designers) investigating how newly produced urban spaces are functioning in three large redeveloped urban areas (Bicocca/Milan, Islands Brygge/Copenhagen, HafenCity/Hamburg).