VIRTUAL: Livable Cities – New York
Abstract
Rapid urbanization and social inequality have created an urgent need for cities to adopt more sustainable, resilient, and equitable urban development models. The 15-minute city (FMC) has emerged as a promising alternative to conventional models of urban development, emphasizing proximity and diversity as key factors of sustainable and livable urban environments. Even though this chrono-urbanism model and its derivatives have raised a high interest for academics, urban planners and policymakers, most studies on the subject are limited to the prerequisite of “neighborhood boundary, which is often criticized for the potential risk of gentrification. To avoid the uncertainty of the current FMC model, this study contributes to developing an innovative method for measuring urban proximity and diversity based on the Integrated Modification Methodology (IMM), a holistic assessment approach developed by IMMdesignLab, Politecnico di Milano. Ex-Macello area (Milan) is selected as the case to conduct the detailed investigation by mapping the site as a dense point cloud, which helps to specify the information of its single element. The method focuses on 1) using network analysis to research the proximity of each point to different daily amenities, i.e., services at the ground floor level, defining the weakest sections for design intervention; 2) adopting the urban α-diversity (Simpson’s Index) and β-diversity which are introduced from Biology, highlighting the potential points for urban optimization; 3) integrating the urban proximity and diversity maps for deep exploring the localized benchmark and malfunctioning areas. The result supports the FMC model as a feasible method by removing the limitation of “pre-defined investigation boundary”. The refined maps of urban proximity and diversity contribute to researchers, urban planners, and policymakers for creating more livable, inclusive, and sustainable urban environments.
Tao is a PhD candidate at the Politecnico di Milano, ABC Department, with the collaboration of the China Scholarship Council. He also works as a research fellow at the IMMdesignLab, Politecnico di Milano. His research focuses on using Nature-based Solutions to improve urban performance, in terms of sustainability, environmental protection, and energy conservation. He has received his MSc. from Politecnico di Milano for Architectural Engineering. He published articles on various urban planning and environmental topics.