FORLI’ VISIONS TOWARDS 2050

In the “Urban Intelligence” event, the final international conference of the European R4E project entitled “Smart Cities rule the future! Roads for a joint green transformation towards 2050” was held in Murcia on 7th of February 2018 (“Smart Cities dominate the future! The paths to a joint green transformation to 2050 “).

The event was structured to give visibility to the various issues addressed by the R4E project and its partners. Francesca Bacchiocchi, project manager of the Municipality of Forlì and head of the Environment Unit, spoke as one of the speakers during the session “A conversation with 8 European cities: What will the city look like in 2050?” reporting part of the visions of the city of Forlì to 2050. “In 2050 – says Bacchiocchi – the citizens of Forlì will enjoy a historic and lively center and a city on a human scale. The city will continue on the one hand in the renovation of historic buildings respecting their heritage and adapted to new uses necessary for the community, on the other the urban planning it will focus on providing new spaces useful for citizenship: for example, a church can become a museum or a theatre, thus maintaining the function of bringing citizens into contact while changing its original function”.

Bacchiocchi continues the speech on the main target of the city of Forlì that will be to renovate its heritage although with an up-to-date meaning of its function, and the city boasts a long experience in this, so next years a great job must be done to use less invasive materials or IT systems to monitor the use of spaces, and manage energy at a district scale.

About this, the challenge, as Bacchiocchi affirms, is to create a business model to make feasible the energy retrofitting projects and so involve enterprises, universities, research centers to identify most suitable technologies to reach the minimum energy efficiency standards (e.g. micro-grid, innovative photovoltaics, geothermal heat pump, micro-grid and cells, led lighting, nanomaterials for insulation, innovative glasses).
First it should be choosed a representative historical building for experimenting new components and testing new technologies in the construction industry to reach the minimum energy efficiency standards, to maximise retrofit solutions and overcome the constraints of the historical buildings.
Then, concludes Bacchiocchi, the restored building could become a research centre where should be possible to organize workshop and lessons on renovation of historical buildings open to construction companies, researchers, students, citizens etc.

In any case it is always important to consider that there are no pre-established rules in this field because each building has its own cultural and social background, architecture and specific materials, however future technical solutions and researches on new materials can make the use of these buildings more and more efficient.