Perifèries envellides

Planning problems of the peripheral locations of the cities and the historic centres have, in many cases, common features, mainly related to the density of urbanization and the poverty of social and urban fabric. In this sense, the actions carried out in the historic centres for their urban recovery may be useful as a response to the situation of the “border areas”. In summary, these historic centres have been the subject for three types of actions: first, the openening of wide roads, an originally French technique of which we have good examples in Barcelona (carrer Princesa-Ferran, Via Laietana), and that consists of the opening of wide communication ways to mend the downtowns and, at the same time, facilitate the road links among the different parts of the city, and that, in the peripheral areas, is reflected on the creation of the high-capacity road network; second, the monumentalisation, that may adopt differents forms, from the reconversion of high-value buildings to new uses, to the creation of new public monumental spaces within the old urban fabric, which has been the case of Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao; finally, there are the techniques of residential fabric regeneration, very diverse, which may go from the complete substitution to much lesser agressive forms, as rehabilitation or restoration. In the last place, and somehow as a synthesis of the three above and as a more complex action, it is to be mentioned the softening of the urban fabric.