LARGE SCALE INFRASTRUCTURES AND QUALITY OF URBAN SHAPE

Objective

General objectives : Having regard to the economic and cultural value of our built heritage and the fact that it is very vulnerable to the depredation of highly intensive use unrelated to the original purpose, this Action aims at the evaluation of the interactions between civil engineering infrastructures and urban space.

Specific objectives :

* research into the impact of large-scale civil engineering works on the quality of the town shape, with regard to formal and architectural aspects and to the organisation and character of urban life. That kind of research should take the form of comparative studies of cases situated in parts of Europe that differ in urban make-up. Built-up areas of different sizes and at different levels in the hierarchy of towns
should be chosen as representative cases;

* research into the relationship between design of infrastructure and the built heritage, in particular the historical fabric of cities. That kind of research should take the form of a comparison among the various attitudes in different European countries concerning urban civil engineering, town planning and conservation of the built heritage.

Current status

The first meeting of the Management Committee took place in November 1994.

At the time of writing (Jan 1997), 13 countries participate in the Action (the latest being Portugal, which signed in September 1996)

The Management Committee has further defined details of research work and division of tasks. It has been decided to work in three Working Groups during the final phase of the Action :

WG 1 "Networks and environment - impact on the quality of urban shape"

WG 2 "Anchorage of large infrastructures and quality of urban shape"

WG 3 "New technologies, information, the Internet"

During 1995 and 1996 a number of seminars have been carried out, in which case-studies have been presented. The idea is to use comparative studies to develop recommendations for planning and design of the urban environment in practice as well as for research.

Programme(s)

IC-COST - European cooperation in the field of scientific and technical research (COST), 1971-

Topic(s)

8 - Civil Engineering

Call for proposal

Data not available

Funding Scheme

Data not available

Coordinator

Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura

EU contribution

No data

Address

Diagonal, 649
08028 Barcelona
Spain

Total cost